Wednesday, October 28, 2009

How to Get Your Kids to Give Away Their Halloween Candy

This is a repost from last year---I am on a mission to make the Great Big Pumpkin a household name ;)

Halloween is a huge event in my kids lives' --I am betting in almost all kids lives (except those who do not celebrate which seems to be more common than you'd think in Texas). My kids love to dress up--this year Miley wants to be Nancy Drew so Sara wants to be Nancy Drew; Dino plans to be Michael Phelps and Spanky may very well be Spanky from 'Our Gang' if I can find the right golf hat and pants. And then they love to trick'r'treat and bring back bags and bags of candy.

After they trick 'r' treat, we go through the bags and they tell me what their favorite ones are. They each eat one piece of candy. And then they take their entire bag of candy, dump it on the foot of the fire place and excitedly run to bed.

The next morning, the candy, except for a few of the favorites, is gone and replaced with a toy.

Confused? Let me explain. We have more than Santa, the Easter Bunny (they never fell for her), and the tooth fairy. We also have the Great Big Pumpkin.

The Great Big Pumpkin as you Peanuts fans might remember, lives in the Great Pumpkin Patch. He comes out on Halloween and searches for candy. If you leave a little bit of candy for him, he leaves a little gift. If you leave all your candy, he leaves the gift you asked for in a letter earlier that month. (Naturally, the gift has to be in reason--he is not allowed to upstage Santa so nothing to be big or special. Santa gets mad when the Great Big Pumpkin gets more attention.)

And that candy? Well, it turns out The Great Big Pumpkin has access to the conference room at a real estate office. He leaves it there. And the Very Busy House with 4 is almost candy free on November 1.

So does the Great Big Pumpkin visit you?

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post Lisa - our triplets are heading out for their first official hunt for the "Great Pumpkin" so it'll be interesting to see if our house will be candy-free by November 1st as well. Happy Halloween. Andy

Susan said...

Yes, I have been doing this since you told me about it a long time ago. "The Great Pumpkin" bought the girls a couple of their favorite DVD's this year!!!

Irma said...

Neat idea...but someone is still eating all that candy! (-:

Amanda said...

I think it's a great idea!

Clare said...

love it! what a great idea!

CC said...

You are way too nice. We just take away most of the candy with nothing in return :)

Unknown said...

We did it last year and plan on doing it again this year!! Thanks for the great idea!

Jacque said...

Family Fun has a neat article in their Oct. issue about doing science experiments with the candy (I'm sure it's on their website too).