October 23, 2020 | Vol. 4

Inside This Edition: • Try a new recipe • Mix up a batch of glow in the dark slime • Compete in a candy corn race • Find a spooky book to read This spooky Día de los Muertos art project is fun for kids of all ages. Color your paper, paint it black, and scratch a spooky scene so the colors show through.

Instructions: From Happy Hooligans Día de los Muertos is not to be confused 1. Completely cover your with Halloween. While Halloween focuses paper with the oil pastels Supplies: on things that are scary, Día de los Muertos, using a good amount of • White card stock (or similar or Day of the Dead, is a joyful time that pressure, so you have a nice heavy weight paper) helps people remember the deceased and thick layer of color. Make sure • Oil pastels celebrate their memory. there are no white spots. • Back tempera paint (or poster 2. Mix together your black paint) The holiday is celebrated mostly in paint and some dish soap. The • Liquid dish soap and takes place on November 1 and 2. amount of dish soap doesn’t • Wide paintbrush or sponge have to be exact, but 1/4 tsp of Different towns celebrate the festival in brush dish soap to 1/4 cup of black different ways, but there are some common paint works well. • Popsicle sticks or toothpicks practices. On the first day it is believed that spirits of children who have died return. 3. With a wide paint brush or a sponge brush, paint over the pastels The second day is when the spirits of adults until there’s no longer any color showing. If you need a second coat, let return. For both days people decorate the the first coat dry before putting on a second. graves of their relatives with flowers and 4. You can wait until your black paint is completely dry before their favorite foods Many families build scratching your picture, but you don’t have to. In fact, it’s easier to altars, called ofrendas, in their homes to scratch into the paint if it’s not completely dry. honor their dead relatives. They decorate the altars with candles, flowers, food, and 5. Scratch your Halloween picture into the black paint. A popsicle photos. Bakeries make a special type of stick can be used for wider lines, and a pointed craft stick or even a bread called . People also eat toothpick can be used for fine lines. candies and sweets shaped like skeletons, skulls, and other symbols of death. 2

Cinnamon Toast Pumpkin From: Allrecipies

Directions: Ingredients: 1. Place your pumpkin seeds in a strainer and rinse, well, removing • 3 tablespoons butter, melted as much stringy pumpkin as you can. • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 2. Dry on paper towels and lay in a single layer on a baking sheet • 1/4 teaspoon salt to dry overnight for best results. Do not dry on the paper towels or the seeds will stick. • 1 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds • 2 tablespoons white 3. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. 4. Place butter in a small microwave safe bowl and heat until the butter is melted. Supplies: 5. Add in the cinnamon and salt and mix well to combine. • Mixing bowl • Microwave safe bowl 6. Place pumpkin seeds in a large bowl and pour butter mixture over seeds; stir evenly to evenly coat. • Measuring cups and spoons • Baking sheet 7. Spread coated seeds in a single layer onto a baking sheet. • Mixing spoon 8. Bake in the preheated oven, stirring occasionally (about every 10 • Paper towels minutes), until seeds are lightly browned, about 30-40 minutes. • Strainer 9. Remove baking sheet from oven, sprinkle sugar over seeds, and stir until evenly coated.

Did you know that are grown on every continent but Antarctica? The world’s top producers of pumpkins include China, India, Ukraine, the , Egypt and Mexico. The top pumpkin producing state is Illinois with 427 million pounds. A 493.5 pound pumpkin was the world’s largest in 1981, but science and technology have greatly expanded the potential for a 2,000 pound pumpkin by 2018. Source: National Geographic Glow in the Dark Slime 3 From: STEAM Powered Family

Supplies: Directions: • Elmer’s White Glue 1. Add a nice size “gloop” of glue to your bowl. How much glue you use is • Contact Lens Solution extremely forgiving, but aim for 4 to 6 ounces. • Baking Soda 2. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. Mix well. • Glow In The Dark Paint (nontoxic) 3. Add 4 to 6 tablespoons of glow in the dark paint. Mix well. • Glow in the dark accessories (spiders, eyeballs etc.) 4. Add a squirt of contact lens solution. Mix well. Add another squirt. Continue mixing. • Bowl • Spoon 5. Once your slime starts to get stringy and pull together, start adding only a couple of drops of contact lens solution at a time, and mix well. • Measuring spoons • Black light (optional) 6. Once your slime starts really pulling together, add some contact lens solution to your hands and start mixing and kneading the slime with your hands. If you add too much contact lens solution, your slime will become stiff and prone to breaking. Slow and steady with lots of mixing is important! 7. Once you have a nice stretchy slime you can add some accessories. 8. Now head into a dark room. Your slime should start glowing immediately. To really turn up the glow fun use a black light (also known as a UV light), this will really help your slime GLOW!

Candy Corn Spoon Race Fill two baskets with candy corn or other small items, such as popcorn kernels or pumpkin seeds. Place the full baskets side-by-side on the ground. Divide players into two teams. Have each team line up behind the full baskets of candy corn. Place an empty basket on the ground at the end of each team’s line of players.

Give each player a spoon, and set a timer for five minutes. On the “go!” signal, the first players in line must scoop out a spoonful of candy corn and then pass it from their spoons to the spoons of the next players in line. The candy corn must be transferred from spoon to spoon, all the way down the line. The last players in line must dump their spoons into the empty basket. This continues until the timer rings. When time is up, count the number of candy corn in each basket. The team with the most wins. 4 BOOK SUGGESTIONS

Looking for more scary and supernatural books? Check out the booklists on the youth page of our website!