Halloween Treat Ideas for the Classroom

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Halloween is right around the corner and while you’ve probably been busy helping come up with the perfect costume for your child, chances are Halloween treats for the classroom haven’t yet crossed your mind.

Don’t worry, our Drama Kids International team has got you covered on the tasty Halloween treat front!

Easy Halloween Treats

The goal is to come up with a Halloween treat your child can share with friends that is both delicious and easy to make. Of course—you always want to check with your child’s school to make sure that treats are allowed and learn of any special requirements or limitations.  Below you will find some of our favorite options.

Halloween Muddy Buddies

Delicious and festive, these muddy buddies are an obvious choice! You’ll need Rice Chex cereal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, butter, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, Kit Kats, candy corn, candy skulls, sprinkles and candy eyeballs to make these happen.

The best part? Halloween Muddy Buddies take less than 10 minutes to make! You can find the full recipe here.

Before you send these treats with your child, be sure that items containing peanut butter are allowed in your child’s classroom and/or school. It’s important to be mindful of food allergies. (See below for allergy-friendly treats!)

Rice Krispie Treat Mummies

This Halloween snack option only need three ingredients: snack-size rice krispie treats, white chocolate chips, and black edible piping gel or icing. In under 10 minutes, you can have adorable little mummies who are just waiting to be eaten. The full recipe for these treats can be found here.

Looking for more festive ideas? Woman’s Day offers a number of different options, all with varying degree of difficulty and time required.

Allergy-Friendly Halloween Treats

Food allergies are increasingly common in this day and age, especially among children. While a child can be allergic to any food, there are eight common allergens that account for 90 percent of reactions:

  1. Milk
  2. Eggs
  3. Peanuts
  4. Soy
  5. Wheat
  6. Tree nuts (walnuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, etc.)
  7. Fish
  8. Shellfish (including shrimp)

Because of the prevalence of peanut allergies, many schools are peanut-free zones in order to protect their students. If you’re worried about coming up with allergy-friendly Halloween treats for your child’s classroom don’t be—we’ve included some excellent options for you below!

Cheese It Up

We know how much children enjoy cheese and there’s no reason why this snack favorite can’t be made festive. You can make fun pumpkin or other Halloween-related shaped cheese treats by getting a cookie cutter or two for a tasty and nutritious treat. Note, this is not the right treat choice if there is a dairy allergy in the classroom.

Popcorn for All

You can decorate a paper bag with Halloween stickers and colors and fill it with homemade popcorn quite easily. Add a bit of fun to it by adding food coloring to the butter and shaking the popcorn in it for a festive treat.

If your child’s classroom requires labeled or packaged items, remember that there are allergy-friendly options out there, such as BoomChikaPop, which can come in individualized bags and simply be put inside the Halloween-decorated paper bag.

Sweet Tooth Options

Sometimes a sweet treat just hits the spot. Consider these candies, which are all guaranteed safe for nut allergies: Tootsie Roll Company brand items like Tootsie Rolls, Junior Mints and Caramel Apple Pops, York Peppermint Patties, Skittles, Starbursts, or Jolly Ranchers.

We hope you find our quick and easy Halloween treat suggestions helpful or inspiring! One more thing: Don’t forget to share once you figure out the perfect treat for your child’s class!

Drama Kids International provides children with a place to learn much more than drama! Our focus is on life skills and confidence building. Interested in finding a program for your child? Visit our website to find a Drama Kids location near you.

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Tips for Helping your Child Handle Bullying

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Tips for Helping your Child Handle Bullying

 

As the school year progresses, chances are your child will experience bullying. He or she may not be the victim, but could still witness it in the classroom, hallway or on the playground.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and Drama Kids International is here to share valuable tips on how to help your child handle bullying.

How common is bullying?

Bullying is a very common thing, with more than one out of every five students having reported being bullied. Female students are more likely to experience a form of bullying.

There are three types of bullying—verbal, social and physical. Students who are bullied report that they are called names, insulted, pushed, shoved, tripped, spit on and excluded from activities on purpose. Bullying is reported to take place in the hallways or stairways at school, in the classroom, the cafeteria, outside on school grounds, on the bus, or in the bathroom/locker room.

How to help your child

First, your child must know how to identify bullying. It’s likely that he or she has been teased by a sibling or friend at some point, which is usually not harmful and done in a playful manner. But your child will need to know that when the teasing crosses the line into being hurtful, unkind and constant, it has become bullying.

Be sure children know it is not their fault if they have been the victim of bullying and reassure them that together you will figure out what to do about it. It’s also important for your child to know that it’s OK to speak to a teacher, principal or counselor about what is going on. Keep the lines of communication open and support your child.

ACT UP! to Stop Bullying

We know how detrimental bullying can be for children, which is why we created the ACT UP! to Stop Bullying program. This is a series of workshops designed for third through fifth graders, which utilizes student participatory drama activities and group discussions to teach children about the various forms of bullying and how they can properly respond. In ACT UP! to Stop Bullying, children will learn things like:

  • The different forms of bullying, including physical and verbal attacks and more subtle forms like leaving someone out from a group on purpose
  • Different roles they can play when bullying occurs, such as silent participant, observer or preventer
  • How to model good behavior

 

Bullying is something that must be taken seriously. If you would like to learn more about our ACT UP! to Stop Bullying initiative, reach out! Our Drama Kids team would love to see it come to a school near you!