In all of our preparation for Halloween, my husband and I overlooked the candy! To make sure that our tricker-treaters wouldn’t go away from our house empty-handed, we made a quick trip to the grocery store. Our conversation on the way to the store went something like this:
Hubby: When I was a kid, my dad used to buy boxes of regular sized candy bars that they sell at store counters. Do we have a warehouse membership where I could buy those?
Me: I think it would be fun to hand out healthy treats and pencils this year. What do you think?
Hubby: Do you want our house to get egged?
Me: Uh, no, it’s just um, well, lots of parents don’t want their children consuming too much sugar. Not to mention childhood obesity and the rise of food allergies among our children.
Hubby: You’re ruining Halloween.
Me: Okay, well, let’s make treat bags with non-food and healthy items to give out to our tricker-treaters. We can also offer a dish full of candy and create candy bags that are safe for children with allergies. Then, each tricker-treater can choose what they want.
My hubby’s response? He is challenging my healthy treat bags to a contest with his bowl full of high fructose corn syrup candy. How will we determine the “winner” of such a contest? When our Halloween night is over, we’ll see who has more treats left over; whoever has more of their treats left over loses.
So, knowing that I wanted to offer healthy alternative treats and since my munchkin is keen on stickers, I thought it would be fun to craft a batch of paper Halloween bags using stickers. Our activity consisted of two parts: first, Annabelle placed stickers on each of the bags. For the second part, I opened several bags and modeled how to drop in the treats. For the bags designated for children with allergies, I asked Annabelle to drop in 2 treats into each bag. To my surprise, she was able to understand the concept of 2 and only dropped 2, as I had shown her, into all of the treat bags! We then added more treats and pencils to our bags. As a side note, this was a great craft activity for a toddler or early pre-schooler.
Now we’ll just have to wait and see what happens on Halloween night. Since I am taking Annabelle trick-or-treating, my hubby is handing out the candy. Hopefully, he will not let his own bias influence the tricker-treaters. I am crossing my fingers that many of our trick-or-treaters will be accompanied by their parents (who I hope will choose healthy treats for their children–then I am sure to win!).
Are you planning to hand out treats this Halloween? If so, what kind of treats will you give away? Have any of you created eco-friendly treats?
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Alas, I’m giving out regular old candy. After this crazy week I just didn’t have it in me to do anything more than buy it and dump it in a bowl. But I did bring in pies to share at school, which isn’t healthier but creates less waste!
With all the green acts you do for our environment, I’d say handing out old fashioned candy on Halloween is simply keeping with tradition (and it is yummy too).
Your students are so lucky to get pie for their Halloween treats too! Yum!
Haha! I can’t wait to hear the final outcome. Tally it up!
OK, Jessica, who won . . . you or your hubby? I love the idea of non-food treats, as this is something we do in our elementary schools now, too, due to the increasing number of children with food allergies. Many people don’t appreciate this until they have direct experience with life-threatening allergies. When I need to be trained in administering an Epipen to a student b/c we can’t wait to take him to the nurse or have the nurse come to our classroom, you can be sure we follow the rules of not sharing food items, where students sit w/ certain food allergens sit during snack in the classroom and lunchroom, as well as clean-up in the classroom afterwards! My students LOVE pencils and stickers, too! I’m always looking for new items to interest them, visiting dollar stores and even recycling some of my own children’s small toys. Gone are the days of bringing in homemade cupcakes for birthday treats, too. Now, those treats have to be nonedible. Keep your great ideas coming!…..Ruth
Thanks Ruth! You can check our updates on “The Results are In . . .” which I just posted today.
Hi,
I just found your blog via Mother Rising and had to comment on this one…
I gave out fruit leather and organic dark chocolate bites. The kids didn’t seem to mind, though chocolate was definitely more popular. :)
For my own kids, they leave their loot outside for the Halloween Fairy, who takes it and leaves a toy and some organic non-HFCS candies. They love it!
Thanks for another great idea.
Thank you for sharing your treat ideas with me. I especially like the idea of fruit leather and yes, I bet the kids did like the chocolate, huh? LOL.
As for the Halloween fairy, I am pretty sure we will go that route next year with our daughter. This year, we allowed her to pick out a few pieces of candy and then Dad took the rest with him into work. She’s been asking me what happened to her candy, and thinks that it is sleeping (her explanation, not mine =)).
By the way, I love Mother Rising. Wendy is awesome and inspiring, isn’t she?
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