As we all know, Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is celebrated on October 31st each year. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, a “time dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints or hallows, martyrs, and all the faithful departed.”
Halloween History
It is thought that Halloween has pagan roots, with traditions originating from the ancient Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, celebrated over 2,000 years ago. During this festival, it was believed that ghosts of the dead returned to earth and the people lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off those ghosts.
In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1st as a time to honor all saints, known as “All Saints Day.” Eventually, the Church Christianized Samhain by incorporating many of the festivals traditions into All Saints Day. Samhain soon became known as “All Hallows Eve” and later Halloween.
Celebrating Halloween Today
Some pagan traditions remain alive today, in the form of carving jack-o-lanterns, dressing up in costumes and participating in festive gatherings. However, our society has taken Halloween to a whole new level with its fascination with horror and sugary treats.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Halloween! It’s so fun to see my children dress up in their favorite character costumes each year. I also love carving pumpkins and celebrating the season with festive fall foods and drinks.
What’s even more fun, is taking our children trick-or-treating door to door in our neighborhood. We are old school and enjoy the old tradition of getting out and seeing our neighbors.
What I don’t love so much is all of the horror displayed in the neighborhood and the excess of sugary sweets.
With four excited children trick-or-treating, we come home with bags full of candy! And it doesn’t help that the trick-or-treating tradition is dying. Our kids each get a handful of candy at each door, due to the low turn-out of kids trick-or-treating each year. But we still do it because it’s fun.
What to Do With All That Candy!
Now, if you’ve been following my blog, you know that we don’t eat a lot of sugar in our home. So each year, I struggle with what to do with all of the loot!
I do not want our children to eat it all, since there are serious health consequences to eating too much sugar. Nor do I want to give it away to others, including the homeless or military, since there are serious health consequences to eating too much sugar!
My husband says we should just throw it all away. But I have a serious problem with just throwing all of that candy away! People spent a lot of money on all of it! It just seems like such a waste to me.
After much deliberation, I thought, there has got to be another solution to eating candy or throwing it away.
And there is!
We started using our candy for science experiments and art projects. It really is a win-win situation for both parents and children. The kids get to eat SOME of the candy. But they also get to do and make really cool stuff with it! What a great way to turn something unhealthy into a healthy learning opportunity!
Following are a few of the Halloween candy activities I have found that I will be doing with my children this month. I have also included a few templates that I made to go along with a few of them. I hope you enjoy these as much as my children!
1. Candy Catapults
These candy catapults look SO fun! I haven’t tried these with my kids yet, but we are going to add this to the agenda this week. We don’t have candy corns, but we have lots of other candy! We’ll be launching M&Ms and Skittles.
2. Candy Chromatography
This art project uses Nerds and coffee filters to
3. Dissolving Gummies
In this experiment, kids drop gummy candies into different liquids and observe the effects on the candy. Here is a template to use with your kids to track their hypotheses and outcomes.
4. Dissolving Lollipops
If you have lots of lollipops of different colors and you are wondering what to do with them, check out this experiment. The lollipops dissolve, leaving behind pretty colored water. Kids can then experiment with color mixing!
5. Expanding Balloons
Watch a balloon expand from the gasses released by mixing Nerds with soda.
6. Glossy Skittles Paint
We are really anxious to try this art project. It requires about 25 skittles of each color. When soaked in corn syrup, the color bleeds into the corn syrup and can be used to paint beautiful pictures!
7. Growing Gummies
We did this experiment last year with gummy bears and worms. It was really fun! However, we only used plain tap water and watched the gummies expand to 3x their original size. We may do it again this year and add salt water to a second bowl.
8. Sink or Float Candy Bars
If you have lots of candy bars, like we do, this is the experiment for you! See whether your favorite candy bar will sink or float in water. Sink them whole, or sink them in pieces, or try both and see if the outcome changes! Here is a template to use with your kids to track their hypotheses and outcomes.
9. Skittles Rainbow
This is another neat experiment I came upon. We will be doing this experiment this week, also. However, we plan to make an actual rainbow out of the Skittles and watch how the colors bleed without blending together to make a rainbow. I have my fingers crossed that it works!
10. Starburst Rock Cycle
And last, but not least, the Starburst rock cycle is a must-do experiment! We did this experiment last Halloween and it was a real hit. My kids learned all about Sedimentary, Metamorphic and Igneous rock. They had such a good time last year, they’ve requested an encore experiment this year. And, since we have so many Starburst candies, we have enough for each kid to do the experiment twice!
What do you do with all of your Halloween candy? Have you tried doing any science experiments or art projects? Please share! I’d really love to know.
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