Googling “americans’ favorite holiday,” I didn’t come up with an obvious answer. But if I had to guess, it’s Halloween. It’s neither religious nor romantic. It involves dressing up in ridiculous costumes and eating sugary food. And, perhaps best of all, it doesn’t come with the boatload of angst that tends to accompany family-oriented holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This past week at the library felt like all Halloween, all the time. In addition to my usual storytimes for 2 and 3 year olds (Halloween-themed, of course), I led a Halloween finger puppet craft program and an evening Halloween storytime. Fun times!

Now, periodically I have these dreams where I’m working on a story and it’s absolutely brilliant. And then I wake up, and the idea is completely nonsensical or stupid. The other week, though, I had a dream that I was in storytime singing a Halloween version of “Old MacDonald.” And when I woke up, I thought, “Hey, not a bad idea! And I bet it would make a great flannel board, too!” Here’s what I came up with:

GOING TO A HAUNTED HOUSE (to the tune of “Old MacDonald”)

Going to a haunted house, E-I-E-I-O
And in that house there is a ___________, E-I-E-I-O

• Ghost – “boo”
• Witch – “cackle”
• Bat – “flap”
• Monster – “grrr”
• Cat – “meow”
• Skeleton – “creak”

I did find another Halloween version of “Old MacDonald” online, but I like mine better. Here’s a photo of my flannel (actually magnet) board figures:

And here’s a photo of my sample Halloween finger puppets, made with toilet paper tubes. The program was for kindergarten and up, and the craft turned out to be both age-appropriate and really cute. (Also a bit messy for those who haven’t quite mastered glue bottle control…)

I got my idea for our evening storytime craft here. Again, here are my samples. This storytime was geared to children ages three and up, and they did a wonderful job with theirs.

Now if only I’d been able to come up with a Halloween costume for myself!