How to make halloween fun at home

Is Halloween cancelled this year? I have heard this question a lot recently and I suspect lots of the things we are used to like Trick or Treat or big local celebrations are not going to happen, but it doesn’t mean Halloween is cancelled. We can still make Halloween fun at home. It might even be better… well definitely warmer and drier.

My kids are, like many, disappointed that we won’t be going Trick or Treating this year so I have been wracking my brains to think of ideas that will still make Halloween fun at home and I thought I would share them with you. These are all very easy to do and most of it can be done very last minute so if your plans have suddenly changed thanks to 2020 then don’t panic we got you covered!

How do you make a Halloween party for kids at home?

If you want to make a halloween at home party for kids it couldn’t be easier as let’s remember that kids really do look for the good. They are excited before you start so it isn’t hard to please them.

The first thing to think about is just sticking to the Halloween theme. I start with the table and work from there. Decorating a Halloween table couldn’t be easier go with the colours orange and black and it can’t fail to look Halloween. You can get paper plates and cups etc, but isn’t very sustainable so I recommend getting reusable items for the table as Halloween comes round every year!!

The next thing I would do is go Halloween themed with the food. My favourite things to do are:

Halloween Blood Chilli with Grave Stone tortilla chips and then Jelly with edible eyeballs.

Halloween chilli is your usual chilli recipe only you add some beetroot to the tomato sauce to a make it brighter and more ‘blood’ like. Check out my recipe for hidden vegetable tomato sauce and to this you would just grate in beetroot before blending and it gives the best colour, but really you can’t taste it so the kids won’t notice!

For the tortillas you just need normal tortilla wraps and some halloween themed cookie cutters.

Cut out your shapes – we went grave stones and then lay them on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.
Lay your shapes onto the baking tray drizzle over some olive oil and then pop them in the oven at around 180 degrees for about 5 -10 mins.
You need to watch them as once they start to turn brown they go quickly!
Once done take them out and cool. You will then have your Halloween shaped tortilla chips to be served with your chilli

Jelly with edible eyeballs is the easiest thing to make. If you can get a skull shaped jelly mould then great, but a normal one will do. Buy some edible eyeballs for cake making and make up your jelly according to packet instructions. Drop the edible eyeballs into the mix and leave to set. It looks super creepy and the kids love it!

Lastly choose your games and activities from some of these great and easy to set up suggestions.

What can you do on Halloween at home?

Organise a scavenger hunt with clues for older children – make it take longer by having them working out the answers to clues to locate the hidden sweets.
Make a pinata – a pumpkin or ghost are the easiest to do as they can basically be round. You can of course buy a pinata if you prefer and here are some I found with short delivery times
Host a Halloween themed party at home – make a Halloween themed playlist and get your dancing shoes on
Decorate the house – we are not going to decorate the front as I don’t want people knocking for Trick or Treat this year so I am picking one room and going to town there. Less clean up, but no less fun
Make Halloween last more than one day with a halloween themed week. For us in the UK it is half term so we have to be entertaining those littles so why not make it Halloween themed
Forget about costumes and go halloween PJs instead. This is far more sustainable anyway as they can be worn all year round
On Halloween night wait until it is dark and do a spooky fire pit in the garden complete with halloween themed lights and games
Play halloween themed games

What are some fun Halloween games?

There are so many fun Halloween games that you can play at home which are easy to set up and great fun for the kids. These are my favourite ideas for making Halloween fun at home for the kids and the grown ups too…

Pin the Boo on the ghost

Create a picture of a ghost and a boo. Think pin the tail on the donkey only with ghosts. You can get all the details here along with two other super easy Halloween at home games: EASY HALLOWEEN GAMES

Doughnut eating race

suspend ring doughnuts from a tree or anywhere you can really so that they are at mouth height. Get the children to stand with hands behind their backs and the winner is the one who eats their doughnut without touching it. There will be a ton of giggles whilst they are playing this game and if mummy and daddy join in too it is even funnier

Toilet Paper Mummy Race

Split your family into 2 teams of 2 (3 in our case) or in smaller families time the activity and rotate partners. One half of the team has a toilet roll the other is to become the mummy. The aim of the game is for the wrapper to turn their team mate into a mummy by wrapping them in toilet roll. The first to use up their loo roll wins.

This game may seem extravagant in 2020 with the toilet roll madness that has ensued and it can be in truth a little wasteful, but we use the loo roll that evening instead of kitchen roll so it at least gets used and then of course recycled. It is literally hilarious and the kids love it.

Pop the pumpkin

We haven’t done this one before, but I saw it and thought it looked so good that I had to include it. We will 100% be doing this. All you need are orange balloons and some green card or paper for the stalk. Put a piece of paper with the name of a prize in each balloon and blow them up.

You could choose to have some of them say ‘try again’ if you wanted some element of ‘maybe’ to the game or just have varying degrees of prizes. We will be going with varying levels of prizes starting from one small sweet up to chocolate bars, but you could do anything you chose.

Arrange your balloons into a pumpkin shape and use tape or blutack to stick them onto the wall or card. Then the kids just need something that will burst a balloon. A pin works perfectly, but you may not be happy giving a pin to younger kids so you could also just get them to choose a pumpkin you could take it down for them and then they could jump on it to burst it

To make the game take longer you could put clues inside the balloons instead which they have to solve to find the sweets.

Bobbing for Apples

This is a really traditional Halloween game, but it is no less fun than it always was. All you need is a bowl, water and some apples. You put the apples in the water, get the kids to put their hands behind their backs and try to catch the apples with their teeth. To up the anti you could blind fold the kids. To make it more hygienic change the water and apples between each child, but as we will all probably just be with our own household this should be less of an issue.

For 3 more fab ideas check out this post

We may not really be able to do trick or treating, but Halloween at home can be really fun and for me, as a parent it is way less stressful to have the kids having fun at home on halloween than to have them all out in the dark on sugar high.

Hope you all have a fantastic time for Halloween this year.