Halloween activities for kids

Halloween craft activities for kids

Halloween naturally lends itself to creativity. The great thing about it is that anything goes. You don’t need to be arty, or have a fully stocked craft cupboard, to be a master crafter. Let’s face it, if you can get your hands on some orange and black paint, then you’re sorted. Throw in an empty loo roll tube and some old lolly sticks and you’re positively acing Halloween crafting! Check out this blog on Halloween crafts for kids from Happiness is Homemade for some great ideas. If the kids enjoy Halloween crafts, it could be worth keeping an eye out for a kids craft club near home to channel their creativity.

Pumpkin carving with kids

For those of you who aren't afraid of getting the kitchen coated in a light coating of sticky pumpkin fingerprints, Pumpkin carving can provide a couple of hours of fun. For older children, coming up with a creative design and carving their own pumpkin is a great way to channel some creativity. Naturally, age-appropriate safety tools are a must, and they’re readily available from the likes of Hobbycraft, Asda, and Wilko. If you’re worried about waste, save the insides for a tasty soup, then roast the seeds for a healthy snack, or pop them out for the wildlife to enjoy.

For the littles, or those who don’t have the dexterity required for carving, pulling the innards out of a pumpkin is great sensory play. Pumpkin colouring-in can provide a great alternative.

Make Pumpkin Slime

The I Heart Arts n Crafts blog has a great recipe for light and airy Halloween slime. Great for sensory play, the slime is made out of ingredients that are easy to get hold of. What’s more, the little ones will enjoy making it as much as they’ll enjoy playing with it.

Halloween games and activities

Sensory “touch-and-feel box”

A Halloween-themed touch-and-feel box will go down spooktacularly with the kids. There’s a little prep work for the parents, but the screams of terror and delight are well worth it. To play, gather together a series of items for the children to touch and guess - blindfolded of course! We’ve played a “severed body parts” themed game, with a peeled tomato (heart), cooked spaghetti (guts), boiled cauliflower (brains), peeled grapes or lychees (eyeballs), and unpopped popcorn kernels (teeth). Kids will have a great time putting their hands into bowls and boxes to try to guess their contents!

The old faithfuls

There’s something about special seasonal days and holidays that makes us hark back to the old days. Sometimes, the games we played as kids go down a treat. Apple bobbing is great fun - or the drier and less healthy variant, hanging donuts on a string also gets a few laughs.

If you're planning a party, the Mummy game can have hilarious results. Grab some toilet rolls, select teams, and then watch as the kids race to wrap up their friends like a mummy before the other team does! Spooky pass the parcel or musical statues (with a Halloween theme) are a safe bet, too.

Getting active at Halloween

There’s no escaping the fact that trick or treating is top of the agenda for most children over the Halloween season. With sugar levels running high, trying to encourage little healthy activity is no bad thing - and Halloween activities can be a fun way to get kids moving!

For some of us, getting active at Halloween means throwing some dodgy moves to the Ghostbusters theme tune (Who you gonna call?). These days, Cosmic Kids Yoga is a great way to get the kids moving. With 1000s of fun, story based yoga activities, there are plenty of choices for Halloween. It’s a gentle, child-friendly introduction to Yoga, which could make them want to explore the possibility of classes.

Halloween food and snacks

Getting involved in activities is a surefire way to bring on the hunger pangs. Cooking for Halloween can be a lot of fun. A bit of simple knifework on a hot dog can make it look like a severed finger, yellow peppers can be carved into pumpkins, string-cheese can be carefully frayed at one end to look like a broomstick. If you’re looking for an easy option, pop some jelly worms into a bowl of jelly, or grab some googly-eyes - they’ll turn anything into a monster!

Halloween costumes - sustainable and cheap

It goes without saying that Halloween is great for dressing up - something lots of kids love (consider drama classes if yours do)! This year, with the cost of living crisis looming large, many parents may opt to make rather than buy. In fact, according to Saveyourwardrobe.com, 7 million Halloween costumes are thrown out each year. In the UK alone, that’s 2000 tonnes of plastic waste - just from costumes!

Asustainablelife.co.uk has some great tips for more sustainable costumes - from simply using what you already have, to borrowing, renting, or scouring the charity shops. If you have the time, a home-made Halloween costume can be knocked up fairly easily. Grab a box and a paintbrush and you’ve got a convincing Frankenstein. Grab a few boxes and transform the kids into a robot. Some makeup and old clothes could easily be a zombie costume. Hey, if all else fails, go for the old favourite and throw a sheet over their heads - it is Halloween after all!