As chilly October gets closer and closer to Halloween, you may find your little ones keen to try out fun halloween crafting activities. This is an easy search indeed - however, many children, once they realise the contents of a spooky halloween crafting kit, might be a little frightened! To that end, we’ve kept sensitive souls in mind and are sharing some simple halloween adjacent activities, without the scary elements!
This can also be helpful if your faith or beliefs contradict celebrating Halloween, but you don’t want your children to feel left out.
Pumpkin play
The showstopper of festive celebrations, it’s very hard to avoid pumpkins in October! While pumpkins have become highly connected to halloween activities, there’s no reason to avoid them for straightforward play activities. Why not visit a pumpkin patch, then decorate your pumpkins for autumnal play? Alternatively try out these easy set up ideas.
Pumpkin painting
If your children are too young to carve, or you feel this is a little too close to halloween, you might like to try out pumpkin painting instead. Simple poster paints will work - simply cover a surface and let children decorate their pumpkins as they please!
Pumpkin stamping
Another great option here is getting a helpful adult to cut out shapes from your pumpkin, and use them as pumpkin stampers! Just like potato or apple stamping, but more autumnal.
Cooking
After all that crafting, you’re likely to have a lot of surplus root vegetables. This is the perfect time to do some cooking. We love ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper, a charming story of autumnal animals trying to make the best soup, for hooking children in to try out making their own delicacies.
Pumpkin exploration
Gutted your hard-working pumpkin? This is a great chance for sensory play. Put seeds, pulp and skin in a tuff tray, or simply on a tablecloth that you don’t mind getting messy, and let little ones explore! This is a wonderful way to work on vocabulary and wonderful for sensory seekers.
Fancy dress and light parties
Halloween features a lot of dress up, so why not have fun without the festivity? No need to connect to trick or treating if you don’t want to - simply encourage your children to raid the fancy dress box, if you have one, or make simple masks like those here. You could even have a ‘light party’ where you dress up and pretend to be heroes, princesses and animals, with disco lights and dancing!
Lantern walks (and lantern making!)
In a similar vein to light parties, October is a dark and cold month. Why not make a paper lantern and go on a lantern walk near to, but not on, halloween? This way, your children experience the fun of trick or treating without the frights! Perhaps walk to a familiar friend’s house, and give them sweets to say hello! A nice reverse halloween idea!
Here is a great set of ideas for making lanterns at home (just be sure to follow safety precautions and never leave flames unattended - we prefer battery operated tealights).
We hope this offers some cosy alternative activities if you want to enjoy the less spooky side of halloween, or avoid it altogether. Enjoy!
