Halloween is just around the corner! Most people are familiar with their local traditions here in the U.S. for Halloween, but how much do you know about the history of Halloween, or about how other people around the world celebrate the holiday? Education.com has some great articles on these topics if you want to know more.
Here's a little of what I learned from those articles. For one thing, it turns out that turnips, not pumpkins, were traditionally carved to be used as candle holders. And although Halloween as it is celebrated in the U.S. is pretty uniquely American, a lot of countries have similar holidays for honoring the dead or partying in costumes - Great Britain even celebrates with fireworks!
If you subscribe to our newsletter, you'll have seen a link to a great set of activities about pumpkins over at EducationWorld.com. My favorite is called Predicting Pumpkins, a hands-on science activity for all ages. All you need is a couple of different-sized pumpkins and the instructions from that page (printing a couple of copies of the PDF worksheet can't hurt). At the end you get to carve your pumpkins just as you normally would, and your front porch will look even better for having diverse sizes of pumpkins carved on it!
The whole activity is written as a lesson plan for a classroom - but remember, the real world and home are both great classrooms! It might be reasonable to adapt activities written as lesson plans for home use, but there are so many lesson plans available online that can be a lot of fun to do at home, even if you don't fill out worksheets or get graded like in school.
If you missed that link because you don't subscribe to our newsletter yet, please sign up! It's free and comes out once a month, full of great tips, contests, and fun education resources. You can sign up on our website, http://www.tutoringbycity.com - just scroll down and put your information in. We won't be selling your email address - you'll just get a monthly email with all kinds of useful information (and the occasional tutoring discount) in it!
Come back Wednesday for some more useful tips about making Halloween a safe and less scary holiday! We're so used to Halloween being about screams and fright - but the holiday can be more friendly for the younger crowd, or for any of us not looking to be scared out of our wits.
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