10 Spooky Kids Activities to Celebrate Halloween at Home

Candy, costumes, pumpkins, and spiders – oh my! As the leaves begin to change and the air gets a little bit cooler, we’re preparing for spooky season. This Halloween things might look a little different – but don’t worry, we have rounded up a few fun kids’ activities to get you and your future engineer in the spirit from the comfort of your own home!

1. Create Your Own Halloween Costume

While everyone is at home these days, why not spend some time on those Halloween costumes and create it yourself! Maybe you can hold a family contest to see who can come up with the best costume. Make it educational and have everyone follow the Engineering Design Process! Call up your friends and family on Zoom and let them be the judge. Or even better, hold the entire contest on Zoom and compete against others!

2. Try Virtual Trick or Treating

Trick-or-treat all October long! “TREAT TOWN Halloween is an interactive and inclusive experience that’s fun for the whole family.” You can download the TREAT TOWN Halloween app from the Apple or Android app store, or play on the web, and connect with your friends, neighbors, and family. Start by decorating your virtual door, then create spooky monster avatars, and enjoy safe trick or treating with anyone across the world!

You will purchase virtual candy credits that your trick-or-treaters can redeem for real candy.

3. Tell Scary Stories

Not good at coming up with stories on your own? Find a good, kid appropriate, spooky story book on Amazon! “Feel your pulse race and your skin tingle as you turn the pages of this spine-chilling anthology of spooky stories from around the world.”

Be sure to get your flashlight or candles ready and set the scene to tell stories all night!

4. Carve or Decorate Pumpkins

Of course, a classic. See who can come up with the most creative pumpkin designs, or maybe try using different carving techniques and tools. Don’t want to bring out the carving utensils and get pumpkin gunk everywhere? Try painting your pumpkins or decorating with other craft materials instead!

5. Set Up a Carnival In Your Backyard

You can find all kinds of Halloween carnival style games online. Grab a roll of raffle tickets and you can even establish a prize system. Encourage kids to add up their own tickets and see which prizes they can “afford” from the prize booth!

6. Decorate a Chocolate Haunted House

Just like at Christmas with Gingerbread House Kits, Halloween brings Haunted House Chocolate Cookie Kits! Bring out the creativity with a spooky, sweet, treat.

7. Have a Halloween Movie Marathon

Spend the evening binging the silliest or spookiest Halloween movies. Whether it’s Hocus Pocus, The Haunted Mansion, Halloweentown, or Monster House – there are tons of Halloween movies on Amazon or Netflix to keep you busy. Sign up for Amazon Prime and get Unlimited Streaming on an abundance of kids movies and shows!

8. Make Halloween Educational

Look around you! Are there things that happen this time of year that you can use as a teaching moment? Maybe the spiders have started to leave webs around – take this opportunity to teach kids all about spiders! Grab one of those decorative skeletons and see if your kids can name the basic body parts. Or, host a fun Halloween themed shadow puppet show and explain to kids how the sun changes throughout the day and affects shadows!

9. Paint Spooky Rocks

Take a trip out into the backyard and collect a few smooth stones or rocks! Have you kids transform them with ghost or zombie faces, or make them cute little pumpkins. Find a kit online complete with everything you need, or purchase googly eyes, paint, and some paint brushes and find your own rocks! You can take the painted rocks back out into the backyard, or even hide them around your neighborhood or a local park for others to find.

10. Turn Your Living Room Into a Haunted House

See how creative you can get at home! This could be especially fun with older kids who might have a large imagination. Spider webs, eerie colored lighting, fog machines are just a few of the possibilities. You’d be surprised at the life-like ghosts (no pun intended) you can create with some cheese cloth, chicken wire, and the perfect lighting!

We hope that this list encourages you to get creative this year!

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