Halloween Safety For Kids

Halloween Party Games

Very shortly little people across the land shall be adorning their most gruesome clothes and knocking or strangers doors demanding a ransom of sweets and treats for their efforts.

Halloween – 31 October

Our children have never really embraced the whole Halloween traditional.

Picture the scene a 4 year old come to the door to be greated by a ghost with a familiar voice that goes to our pre-school. It is a heady mix of excited, confusion and terror.   So, I’m afraid this year we shall not be participating.

However, I do have a friend who’s children love it. They spend huge amounts of time on getting their costumes just right. Where they magic up  the time from for such endeavours I really don’t know.

Nonetheless she can always be seen, every 31 October walking the streets with a merry band of Ghoules, Goblins, Ghost and the occasional spiderman. Not only was she happy to take her children, she took her friends children too – 6 children in all.

Despite her roping in a friend to help, that number of children together always makes me nervous. You just never can tell what will happen.

Always make sure you have some SafetyTats or Children’s ID bracelets. They are really easy and just help reassure you that if one of your little cherubs gets separated from the group they are only a telephone number away.

Safe Trick or Treating to you all.

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Healthy kids lunch-boxes to help prevent cancer

Back in August we talked about Lunch-box’s V’s School dinners.  Well it seems that kids lunches are back on the health agenda.  This time the World Cancer Trust is re-enforcing the message that your child’s lunch box needs to be healthier with more fruit and veg.

With roughly 15 million lunch-boxes being packed in the UK every day it’s obviously a lucrative market for the food industry.   This ultimately means lots of advertising and marketing being thrust towards us time-strapped parents.

The main messages coming through time and time again, is convenience.  There are lots of “Just pop ‘em in the lunch-box…” or full of “all the things that kids….”.

So with 190 school days in the year – which translates to 380 lunches in our house, it’ not difficult to assume that convenience is the name of the game.  So for lots of parents the pre-packed cheese, drinks, snacks, tubs and pots are easy.

But stop for a minute.  Convenience doesn’t need to be processed.  This isn’t just about shoving something quick and easy into a plastic container and sending our nearest and dearest out with something which might be called food but most probably lacks the nutrients our little ones need.

If you take a step back and look at the eating habits or your children would your honest appraisal be a good one or a bad?

I know what it’s like though.  Trying to get my youngest to eat greens is really, really tough.  At the sight of the tiniest floret of broccoli on the dinner plate there is a incredulous spasm that washes over my son.  But I will not stop.

I once read that you need to plate up and try a vegetable 27 times with a child.  At the end of that time if they still don’t like it after all your encouragement then move onto something else.  This might mean a lot of wastage, but, I think it is worth the effort.

I firmly believe that you need to encourage your child at an early age to adopt healthier options.  This way they will, hopefully, carry those attitudes later into life.

For more information visit the World Cancer Research Fund website.  Or the Diet Cancer Report

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