By Jocelyn Greene from Child’s Play NY
It’s often thought that no one enjoys Halloween more than children, but many parents can attest that this fang-baring, sword-brandishing, bone-chilling holiday can be an overwhelmingly scary time for little ones. On our daily walk to school, my son and I pass some pretty creepy decorations: Giant clown heads float over restaurants, movie posters show nightmarish phantoms, disembodied ghouls hang in brownstone windows. Who knew Brooklyn could be so terrifying!?
A few ways to make sure that your youngest family members enjoy this holiday is to acknowledge all their fears and allow them to actively practice their bravery through play. Ultimately, their imagination will soar, whether on wings of tulle or cardboard, and through games you can help to guide them toward a place of empowerment and courage just in time to say “Trick or Treat!”
Here are four ways to use Halloween, and this whole season, as an opportunity to play games together, so that even the youngest can love all of its ghoulish, gory greatness. These are tried and true games from the theatre classrooms that work in any season, and especially on October 31st, for courage-filled play.
Take the Magic Elevator to Familiar and Spooky Destinations
Once your kids know who they’ll be for Halloween, help them feel grounded in where they come from. Take a ride in the “Magic Elevator” to establish their homebase. Brainstorm several locations together: Where was your character born? Where do they love to vacation? Where do they live now with their family? What’s their happy place? Put these locations into action by visiting them as “floors” in the elevator.
Finding their character’s home can give kids a great sense of security. Additionally, this is a super way to establish a “backstory” for their Halloween persona. When you get off the elevator, explore the surroundings and work on accomplishing a mission. A Butterfly may live in an Enchanted Forest you can specifically visit the Meadow Floor full of delicious flowers, the Backyard Floor full of crazy little kids with nets, and then head back to safety to a Redwood Forest Floor full of other butterfly friends.
Encourage at least one stop on the elevator to be extra dramatic (ie scary!) where your kids can practice being brave before heading back to safety. Purposefully planning a visit to these risky places – and making sure there is a clear and accomplishable goal on that floor – allows kids an opportunity to flex their “brave muscles”. Remind your children that safety is just an elevator ride away, highlighting the rewards of adventuring out of their comfort zone and facing their fears.
Make a Magic Stew To Get Super Brave
Nothing sparks kids’ imaginations like thinking about food! Use this to your advantage and decide what their character eats for power. You can create a new combo of foods with them, filled with tasty ingredients that they think their character would love to eat. This “Magic Stew” will magically fuel them up while they are trick-or-treating.
If you are hosting a party and want to use this as a game, ask your little guests to take turns throwing (invisible) ingredients into the stew. Everyone can contribute a food (or food-like thing) that they think their character would eat to make them brave. This is both incredibly collaborative and wonderfully silly.
Put this into action before you hit the streets: On Halloween, you can have an invisible canteen of the Magic Stew so that your child can slurp from it if they see something that is particularly daunting. It is amazing the power of imagination, fueling up on this brave food can help you walk past that crazy ghost or scary haunted house with vigor. Your child will appreciate that you are acknowledging their fears and playing with them at the same time.
Shake Sillies and Scare Scaries OUT
On October 31st, make sure you “Shake Your Sillies Out” before you head out on your candy run. Explore all the action words that would connect to your child’s character and help them find a vibrant physical life. They can even make up new words to describe unique moves that they come up with.
In addition to finding the moves of their character, propose words that might otherwise make them afraid: sneak, crawl, slime, scare, etc. Asking them to act out the scary thing themselves (and doing it with them) can make these moves seem much less terrifying and much more playful.
Of course this game is also helpful after the kids get all their loot and need to work off that sugar high before going to bed!
Find a Brave Chant for your Halloween Route
I love the chant “Going on a Bear Hunt” for the youngest of trick-or-treaters. Adapt the words to fit the occasion:
We’re going on a treats hunt, We’re going to find some yummy ones, What a beautiful night We’re not scared!
You can continue reciting it as you trick-or-treat together. Encourage kids who are struggling with seeing a scary thing (a scary house coming up or someone dressed really spookily) to both express and then move past what is frightening..
We can’t go over it We can’t go under it Let’s move past It!
In this way, you are allowing to name their fears, and giving them a playful way to work through them.
Children play pretend not just to dress up, but to create a script that then allows them to express their feelings and to process their experiences. On Halloween and beyond, empowering them with the tools and space to tell these stories nurtures their imagination and formation of identity.
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Jocelyn Greene is the Founder and Executive Director of the theater education company, Child’s Play NY. For the past 10 years, she and her team of professional teaching artist-actors have led production classes, camps, birthday parties and social-emotional learning drama workshops for students ages 3-16 in NYC . She lives with her husband and 6-year-old son in Clinton Hill.