As part of being a good parent (whatever that means!) and supporting my kids’ school, I had been roped into building a ghost house for the school fair. And even though it turned out to be a lot of hard work (stapling black builder’s plastic everywhere to make it very dark takes a long time!), it was also so much fun!
It was really interesting though, trying to find that fine line between being scary enough for the older kids but not wanting to absolutely terrorise the little prepies…
So, we came up with…the Graveyard.
There was certainly lots of screaming (which is what we were going for, so yay!!), a few tears (not many!) and by the end of the day, I could barely talk, but it was amazing. The look on the kids’ faces when they came in and then the relief they had when they made it out the other side – awesome. We even had repeat offenders! And it was so interesting to see the story change during the day, not only from a fairly tame version for the little kids to a much bigger story for the older kids, but also the embellishments that each scarer made during the day as we watched the effect that it had on the kids (and parents!) and then a pulling back to the basics – and a good story as the day come to an end. Bit like writing a novel really… 🙂