Teach Kids Something Halloween with PowerPoint

Halloween is coming in the corner. As a parent or teacher, you may need to tell your kids something special about the big holiday, for example, Halloween origin, Halloween symbols, etc. You can read to them with a book. However There is a more appealing story-telling method, i.e. present the HALLOWEEN history and signs in intuitive PowerPoint slideshow, or even video or DVD (with Moyea PPT to DVD and Video Converter). Kids in the 21st century are inclined to learning with audiovisual technology. Thus by using multimedia tools like PowerPoint and video converters, you can satisfy kids’ curiosity in the exciting Halloween.

Things that can help in making a Halloween PowerPoint lesson:

Free Halloween PowerPoint Templates offers you an astonishing string of Halloween images like black cat, bat, skeleton, gravestone, and more.

Celebrate Halloween 2009 with DIY DVD Slideshow details how to compose a Halloween story with PowerPoint and transform it onto a polish DVD for playing on a home TV with a DVD player.

If you are looking for tips on making your Halloween PowerPoint story into a YouTube video, the article Use PowerPoint to Create a Halloween Game or Story Video may be a help.

Halloween Resources for Teaching Kids with PowerPoint

A Brief History of Halloween

Halloween (also spelled Hallowe’en) is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints. It is largely a secular celebration but some have expressed strong feelings about perceived religious overtones.

Halloween has origins in the ancient festival known as Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sau-an), which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer’s end". This was a Gaelic festival celebrated mainly in Ireland and Scotland. However, similar festivals were held by other Celts - for example the festival of Calan Gaeaf (pronounced kalan-geyf) which was held by the ancient Britons.

Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise showing a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The young children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play a variant, which involves retrieving an apple hanging from a string. The couples at left play divination games.

The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". The celebration has some elements of a festival of the dead. The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family’s ancestors were honoured and invited home whilst harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.

Another common practice was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink. The name Halloween and many present-day traditions, derive from the Old English era.

Common Halloween Symbols

a. A candle on a western window sill - (always by Irish and Scottish) to honor the departed

b. Carving - Traditionally lanterns from turnips or rutabagas, while nowadays pumpkins

c. Works of Gothic and horror literature

d. Devil, Grim Reaper, ghosts, ghouls, demons

e. Witches, goblins, vampires, werewolves, zombies, skeletons

f. Black cats, spiders, bats, crows

g. Costumes - to scare off demons

Trick-or-treating for Kids

It is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" refers to a (mostly idle) threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given. In some parts of Ireland and Scotland children still go guising. In this custom the child performs some sort of show, i.e. sings a song or tells a ghost story, in order to earn their treats.

You can make a photo album video or DVD movie about a live Halloween trick-or-treating game, so that more people will share your stunning works.