Last year, I shared a recipe for very yummy sugar cookies. I use that recipe to make cookies and then decorate them with Halloween candies. Making and decorating these cookies with your grandchildren would be a fun Halloween activity. Here’s the link to that recipe.

Are you having a party for your grandchildren on Halloween? Need a few more ideas? Here are some that you might want to do. Make sure you adapt them to fit the age of your grandchildren and your circumstances.

Digital Scavenger Hunt.
If you have more than five grandchildren coming over for a party, you might want to divide them into two groups for this activity and have grandpa be with one group. Write up a list of things that each group is required to do. (It’s best to either have different lists so the groups are not doing the same things at the same time. Or, put the activities in a different order.) Give each group the list and a digital camera. They need to perform each activity on the list and take a picture of the group doing the activity. The first group back to grandma’s house is the winner. Afterwards, have fun looking at the other group’s photos.

Example activities for the lists: Standing in the candy aisle in a grocery store with each team member holding a bag of candy. Holding or standing around a pumpkin on your front step. Trick or treating. (Make prearrangements with a friend to let yourgrandchildren do this at her home.) Sitting on a park bench (or an appropriate place) painting their fingernails black. Dancing in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Build a Scarecrow.
Have a variety of old clothes, hats, gloves, old pillowcases, newspapers, string, and markers. Divide the grandchildren into teams. Give them 15 minutes to build a scarecrow.

Candy Corn Toss. Divide your grandchildren into two teams. Give each person 20 pieces of candy corn. Place a plastic pumpkin (the kind stores sell for trick or treating) about 10 feet away. Have the grandchildren toss their candy corn into the plastic pumpkin. The team that has the most candy pieces inside their pumpkin is the winner.

Halloween Pictionary. Write Halloween words or phrases or activities on slips of paper. Divide into two teams and play Pictionary using the Halloween words.

Pumpkin Bowling. If you don’t have old plastic drinking glasses that you don’t care about, purchase six plastic ones from your local dollar store. To play, set them up in a triangle form with a row of 3 glasses, then 2, and then one. Place them fairly close together. Get a small pumpkin. Have your grandchildren take turns rolling the small pumpkin trying to knock over the glasses.

I hope you have a safe and happy Halloween with your grandchildren.

Digi-Gram

Grandma Ideas

Vampire Count is a perfect game to play at an evening Halloween party — it’s a game for all ages. Moms, pops, grandmas, grandpas. Youngsters and teenagers.

The only props you need to play this game are a deck of cards and some scary music and a way to play the music such as an iPod hooked up to speakers. (You don’t really have to have scary music. It justs adds to the ambiance if you do have it.) When you invite guests, recommend that they wear dark clothing.

Before guests arrive, set up the music system outside in a common area such as on your patio. Get a deck of cards. Count out one card for every guest. Determine which card will be ‘it.’

After guests arrive, gather in the common area. Let them know where the boundaries of play are and give them a couple of minutes to inspect the area to find places to hide. Call everybody back to the common area. Tell players they must stay within the boundaries.

Shuffle all of the cards. Pass the cards out face down so each guest has one card but cannot see anybody else’s card. They look at their card. The person who gets the card that is designated the ‘it’ card is the vampire. The others are victims.

Collect the cards and put them in a safe spot. Turn off all lights in and outside the house. The darker the better.  Turn on the scary music and have the vampire close his eyes and slowly count to 25. While the vampire is counting, the victims run away and find a place to hide. Once they are hidden, victims cannot change their hiding place. When the vampire gets to 25, he turns off the music and yells out, “I vant to drink your blood!” Then he begins searching for his victims.

When he finds a victim, he gently puts his hands around the victims’ neck. The victim cannot struggle or flee. The victim gives a blood curdling scream and then turns into a vampire. The victim-turned-vampire now helps the vampire search for other victims.

If the vampires are having a difficult time finding any of the remaining victims, the head vampire yells, “Come to Transylvania.” All victims who have been found return to the common area where the play began. The vampire counts all of the victims. If there are still victims that are not found, the vampire calls out, “Oh victims, where are you?” The remaining victims have to give a ‘nervous’ cough to assist the searching vampires.. The first vampire can continue calling out “Oh victims, where are you” until all of the victims are found. Victims have to give a nervous cough every time the first vampire calls out.

When all victims have been found and turned into vampires, everybody returns to the original starting point. Begin a new round by shuffling and passing out the cards and following the remaining rules of play.

When we played this game several years ago, we had invited families so we had guests of all ages. On one of the rounds, we couldn’t find one of our son’s friends. We looked, and looked and looked. When the main vampire called for the ‘nervous cough,’ the cough led us to our son’s Ford Ranger pickup. We looked under the truck. We looked in the bed of the truck. We looked in the cab of the truck. We walked around and around the truck. We couldn’t find the last victim. Finally we gave up. The main vampire called out for the victim to come out of hiding.

Imagine our surprise when the friend stood up from behind the truck. He had been laying on the back bumper! Even though we had walked several times around the truck, nobody saw him because he kept so still (and his clothes blended in with the dark of the evening . . .1). We had a great time playing this game!

If you’re planning a Halloween party for this Friday evening, you might want to give this game a go. Try it. You’ll like it.

Digi-Gram

Here’s a picture of our little vampire . . . Click on it to see a larger picture.

Mother Goose has gone off her rocker. She’s become Halloween-ized. (Is that a word? It ought to be . . .) Take one writer, Judy Sierra, add one artist, Jack E. Davis, and what do you get? Monster Goose!

Monster Goose is a delightful storybook of familiar nursery rhymes with a Halloween twist. My favorite is Jack Sprat.

Jack Sprat
Ate some Fat
And drank some gasoline.
He lit his pipe
And in one swipe
Invented Lean Cuisine.

Don’t ya love just Jack’s eyeballs??

The poetry is clever but the illustrations are what really make this book.

However, I’m not sure I would read this book to toddlers. Or even grandchildren under the age of six. It might be a tad ‘too much’ for the wee ones. Or too gross. Or too mature that they wouldn’t understand the humor of the pictures or the poetry.

As you read it with your older grandchildren, spend plenty of time looking at the pictures. They’re almost better than the clever writing!

Enjoy!
Digi-Gram

On your mark. Get set. Grandmas, grab your cameras!

There something about seeing a darling little granddaughter in a cute princess costume or a Dracula enshrouded grandson that makes grandmothers grab their cameras and get digital! Who can resist taking a plethora of pictures of the ghouls and goblins in their costumes at a family Halloween party?

But, have you ever looked at your pictures after all of the goodies have been eaten, the decorations cleaned up, and everyone’s gone home only to find that very few of your pictures turned out? If that’s happened to you, you might want to follow some of these tips to ensure that you’ll come away with fabulous pictures.

1. Practice, practice, practice. If you’re using a digital camera and you’re not quite familiar with it, take some time before the grandkids come over to show off their costumes to become familiar with your camera. Especially the settings for using the indoor flash feature. There’s nothing more disappointing than taking inside pictures only to later find that they are grainy because of poor lighting. (Voice of experience here . . .)

2. Use the rule of thirds. Imagine that your view finder is divided into thirds horizontally and vertically making a tic-tack-toe grid. As you take pictures, put the more important elements of your picture where the lines intersect. This will add visual interest to what might be a rather ordinary picture.

3. Get a little bit closer. Instead of standing far back from your subjects, take several steps closer (or use the zoom feature) . Fill your view finder with your photo subject. You want to capture the twinkle in your granddaughter’s eye or the impish smile of your grandson — and not a landscape picture of the whole room. (Which do you care most about — the room or your grandchild?)

4. Pay attention to the background. Is the background busy? Cluttered? Detracting? You want the main focus to be your grandchildren and not what’s happening in the background. Nor do you want the background to detract from your grandchild. And, make sure the background isn’t creating a strange picture such as flowers sitting on your grandchild’s head (if you’re taking pictures outside).

5. Don’t say “smile.” When you say “One, two, three, smile’ your photo subjects have a forced, unnatural smile. Before you take the picture you might want to say something silly like “There’s a bird coming out of your nose!” Or tell a knock knock joke. Saying something that they aren’t expecting will put natural laughs on your subjects faces.

6. Change perspectives. Squat down to be eye-level with your grandchildren. Lie on the floor to shoot upward. (Just make sure you can get back up . . . ) Tower over your granddaughter and shoot down on her. Stand so you are facing her side and have her look over her shoulder. Doing this will make your pictures more interesting.

7. Take candid shots. Sometimes the best pictures are the ones where your grandchildren aren’t even aware that you’re taking their picture. Don’t have them stop and pose for you. Instead, just start snapping. You’ll end up with far more natural photos.

8. Take lots of pictures. The more the merrier. Taking pictures with a digital camera is SO much cheaper. You don’t have to pay for the film nor for the processing. Not every picture will be a keeper. But that’s okay. By having a large number of pictures to choose from there’s sure to be several that are precious.

These tips apply any time you take pictures — not just at Halloween time. Practicing these tips will improve your pictures and will become second nature to you.

Happy picture taking!
Digi-Gram