Halloween costumes: dress-up box treasures

October 22, 9:20 AMParenting ExaminerKaren Deerwester

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On Halloween, we celebrate pretend worlds and unlimited imagination.  We conquer ordinary fears with grandiose (yet safe) horrors.  We threaten tricks and skulk around in the dark corners of childhood with monsters and villains.  Or, we float above ordinary worlds with untouchable butterfly wings. 

Halloween is transformative.  Children get to be anything - serious or goofy, good or evil, something that mirrors their truest nature or something completely out of character.  Halloween holds too much magical power to keep to one day or one month.

Now is the time to start your child's dress-up box, if you don't already have one.  Save this year's costume.  Run out and buy more on sale the day after Halloween.  Raid the closets for fun and funky.  Add props from resale shops, building supply stores, or toy stores.  Here's just a few ideas to get you thinking:

• tiaras and fire fighter hats
• doctor scrubs and booties
• tool belts and safety goggles
• scuba mask and fins
• animal masks
• swords, shields, and other WMD (really, it won't unleash aggression if grown-ups set a few simple boundaries)
• crazy tourist clothes
• that feather boa from college
• a few yards of silk or other interesting texture to make a cape or a dragon
• non-toxic make-up

Check out Martha Stewart's suggestions for stocking up your dress-up box and OurLittleTreasure.com for theme accessories. 

Create opportunities for pretend play.  You will open your child's eyes and mind to new worlds.  Consider these thoughts on imagination from J.K. Rowling's 2008 Commencement Address at Harvard:

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.  In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

For your child, it goes beyond the human...to animals and inanimate objects too!