12 Safe & Fun Halloween Activities for Families

Hold a Spooky Party at Home

Whether it be at yours, a fiends or a relatives, why not throw a little fancy dress party for your children?

You can either decorate the room up with homemade crafts or there are loads of pre-made decorations readily available from the high street and online.

Scene setters are fun too. These are large themed wall coverings and really add to the spooky atmosphere as an amazing backdrop.

Fill a cauldron with juice and look on Pinterest for thousands of ideas for spooky party food!

Plan a selected ‘trick or treat’ route with friends and neighbours

Though I don’t agree with sending your children, supervised or not, off to knock on strange peoples doors, I really don’t see a problem with getting together with a load of neighbours who all agree to be ‘knocked upon’ for a pre-selected hour or two.

Ours isn’t a very long road, but it is full of families with young children. This way, there will be peace of mind in that you will know exactly who you’re knocking on!!

Hold Mini Games or Craft Competitions

These could be held either at a party with friends or just as a family in your home.

Again though, check out Pinterest – there are loads of fabulous ideas to steal if you fancy your hand at a spot of DIY or just pop online or down to your high street if you have less time to spare!

Obviously the craft competitions should probably be held with a few more participants, and you could even have spooky little prizes for all to win.

Sit down together for a spooky tea or evening meal

If you only really want a quiet evening but still want to mark the occasion somehow for the children, why not sit down with your family and just have a spot of spooky tea?

You could dress up the room and table with spooky decorations like carved out pumpkins, jack ‘o’ lanterns and a creepy cobweb tablecloth with spiders dotted all over it!

Go to Halloween events being held in your local area

These are great ways of getting out in the day or night to join in with celebrations around your home.

Just look online for a ‘what’s on’ guide to your local area.

For example, a couple of ideas from my region this year are a ‘spot the pumpkin’ trail at a local farm park, a spooky themed walk within the grounds of a stately home, a children’s Halloween holiday camp and fancy dress fun mornings at nearby soft play centres.

Creepy Cake Decorating

A lovely activity to do with your children in the comfort of your own home.  Whether you’re a total novice, or the next Mary Berry, ANYONE can bake a cupcake. Seriously, even I can if I use the packets from the supermarket!!

(If you really can’t do this – they also stock ready made cupcakes, all ready for you to decorate up to your hearts content!

So, once you have your cake base – get the kids to go to town with as many scary and ghoulish designs they can think of.

Scary Scavenger Hunts

Again another easy one.

You could either use little toys, like larger than life plastic spiders or you could draw and cut out pictures eg pumpkins, witches hats, cats etc, the ideas are endless. Then just pop them up/hide them out in the garden or even along a walk if you’re very enthusiastic like me.

The joy here is that it can easily be played inside the house if the weather is awful.

Get Crafty

The world here is your oyster.

It could be anything from colouring, painting, cutting, sticking, making things from scrap or household recycling.

This weekend I picked up a couple of kits from a supermarket, so sat today with my girlies and made lanterns and spooky door hangers.

Spooky Story Telling

A great opportunity to sit with your children and read with or to them. Obviously you will need to choose age appropriate books if the tales are a little on the ghostly side, but there are Halloween based books out there for all ages.

Get the children to help decorate the house or porch

Obviously the latter I only if you have chosen to accept trick or treaters that is. It seems this is the way to let other families know you are a ‘trick or treat friendly’ house. So why not get the kids to help decorate up your porch and remember to leave the outdoor light on also.

Your little ones may be too young to stay up and actually see the trick or treaters but they can still have fun decorating the door up, maybe even with some hanging decorations they’d made earlier!

If you don’t accept trick or treaters, then what’s stopping you dress up the mantel piece or the hallway even.

Pumpkin Carving with Mummy & Daddy

A great activity to do with your children. Obviously as there are sharp knives involved you will need to careful, but they can help draw onto the pumpkins, help spoon out the insides etc

And then they can add their little creations to the front door step for the activity above.

Watch a Scary Movie

A lovely way to spend quality cuddle and snuggle time with your children.

Why not make the room up into a movie theatre, invite some of their little friends round, draw the curtains and have big bowls of popcorn and some Halloween treats for them to share.

Check out my list of Favourite Halloween Movies for Kids here!