History Meets Halloween at NYHS!

The Mom here! Halloween fun is our favorite fun of all…and every October, there are always countless activities and events to choose from. However, there is only ONE place where history meets Halloween and that, of course, is the annual Hallowe’en Family Party at New York Historical Society . The rain didn’t dampen our fun one little bit and the kids enjoyed every minute of their spectacular, spooky Halloween adventure – complete, of course, with trick or treating!

Waverly here! I always love visiting NYHS but was even more excited to have some Halloween fun there with my friend Ahiri! The fun started right away when we saw Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln all dressed up for the occasion…we’ll show you those guys later! We were too excited to go inside and start all the fun. First stop — making our own cool candy bags! And as soon as we finished, we got candy to put inside them! How awesome is that? To make it even more awesome, my favorite Halloween song of all time was playing – Thriller! It definitely made the whole experience even more “thrilling!”

Next we checked out the Colonial Chocolate Making tables where we learned all about how chocolate used to be made from start to finish, and we even got to taste it from start to finish, and to smell all the spices and things they added to it to make it taste better. We loved this activity because we really got some hands on experience while learning all about chocolate! We learned that a lot of hard work went into making it and also that people used to only drink chocolate. Things have definitely changed…

Next we went down the lantern-lit staircase to the DiMenna Children’s Museum where more spooky historical fun was waiting for us! We sat in the library and listened to spooky true stories about New York Pirates who still haunt our area today!! I loved how it was all decked out for Halloween and had a really cozy, creepy feel…

Of course, what’s Halloween without pumpkins? Luckily there was a really cute Pumpkin Patch where we were allowed to pick our own pumpkins, and then we went to another table to decorate them.

We wandered around and learned about so many things while having fun, like baseball, how colonials used to live, and also how kids worked all day for just a few pennies! Kids have definitely come a long way thanks to the hard work and strength of the kids that came before us…and now we can definitely say that kids do have power!

It was so fun to be roaming around, dressed up in our costumes while learning all about how things used to be. There was so much to look at and so much to learn while having fun – I wish school could be like this!

Next we made our own “Midnight Ride” and we also cracked a secret code and learned all about secret messages and what happened if you were caught being a spy. Can you spot the secret message?

It was just about time to gallop on home with our bags filled up with candy, so we played a quick game of Pin the Tail on the Horse…

And of course had to pose for pictures with Abe and Frederick! We had a spooky spectacular time celebrating History and Halloween at NYHS and I cannot wait to go back!

Mom here again – there is so much to do at NYHS, like the current Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere exhibit, which celebrates his many accomplishments that go way beyond his infamous midnight ride. Like Waverly, I can’t wait to go back either – we highly recommend a visit to NYHS, because … History Matters!