In Wales, and in many parts of the UK, we’re in lockdown during this “Halloween Half Term”. Thankfully there are still lots of ways we can celebrate half term and enjoy Halloween without leaving our homes. Take a look at our seven ways (an idea for each day) to enjoy Halloween at home this half term:
Before we begin “celebrating” Halloween, I always encourage the kids to learn about the history of why we celebrate Halloween and the Halloween Traditions.
Sunday: Day 1
Halloween Craft and Decorations
Start by keeping kids busy by making some Halloween Crafts. These can be as simple as colouring Halloween pictures, making paper mache pumpkins, milk bottle ghosts or a Halloween pom-pom garland. Use your spooky crafty makes to decorate your home and or front windows.
Monday: Day 2
Pick up a Pumpkin!
Many families went pumpkin picking last week while the farms were still open. If you haven’t yet bought a pumpkin you can still buy them locally (in a small convenience store or farm shop) while picking up your essential shop. If you’ve got your pumpkin, plan your pumpkin design and today carve your pumpkin. You could make pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie to continue the pumpkin theme.
If you haven’t managed to get real pumpkins this year, you could carve a turnip or swede or use a black marker to design spooky faces on your papier mache or coloured in pumpkins.
We missed out on going to the Pumpkin Farm this year but will still plan a mini Pumpkin Trail in the garden and also try and take part in The Adventurer’s Big Neighbourhood Pumpkin Trail.
Tuesday: Day 3
Plan Your Halloween Costumes/Make Up
Spend the day planning and making your Halloween costumes and practising your face paint/make up skills. This may be as simple as a rummage through your fancy dress collection. If not, don’t worry, so many costumes can easily be made from the clothes you already have. For example, plan a cat costume around black t-shirt and leggings or cut and stain old clothes to become a zombie costume. My favourite costumes as a child were the ones when I made my bat’s wings out of cardboard and my witches cape out of a binbag. Younger kids will love having their faces painted and getting to paint your face. Older kids enjoy special effects makeup and creating fake blood and wounds. Check out Youtube for the tutorial of their choice.
Wednesday: Day 4
Halloween Puzzles and Games
Pop on some Halloween music and spend the day playing Halloween games and puzzles. Take out your Halloween themed jig-saws (if your stuck you could include any magic/Harry Potter and Disney Villain themes too!). Play spooky board games, such as Snakes and Ladders, Zombie Themed Operation, Haunt the House and Cauldon Quest.
If your games cupboard is low on Halloween themed games, make your own! You could make and play “Pin the Smile on the Pumpkin” or “Pin the Tail on the Black Cat”. Halloween Bingo is quick to make and play. Planning and making board games is a great way to develop both thinking and creative skills. Izzy made a “Scooby-Doo” version of Cluedo recently. You could also play Scattergories, Consequences, Scrabble and Charades, but all with a spooky theme!
Thursday: Day 5
Bake Spooky Biscuits
Bake some spooky biscuits, such as our spooky Vegan Ghost Biscuits or make Chocolate Toffee Apple Slices (a more convenient and portioned version of the original toffee apple). It’s fun (and tasty) to make Spooky Fruit Creations too.
Friday: Day 6
Take a Spooky Evening Walk
Take an evening walk. If neighbours have decorated their homes and windows for Halloween, look out for these on your travels. If you live in an undecorated area there are still lots of spooky signs to look out for during an evening walk- look out for toads, the moon, creepy shaped leaves (read The Witches Hand by Peter Utton (I’ve linked so you can see which book I mean but I’m sure it can be bought for usual price elsewhere. Sometimes things get scarily overpriced on Amazon!)), cobwebs, spiders, black cats and bats. Come home and get cosy with a hot chocolate and a watch a Halloween film.
Saturday: Day 7 – It’s Halloween!
Celebrate Halloween!
While we can’t go Trick or Treating (we never do anyway!) or visiting all our family this Halloween, we’re still going to celebrate. We will still dress up, light candles in our pumpkins, either cook hot dogs or a Spooky Party Tea, light a fire and tell ghost stories, decorate cookies, play our Halloween Playlist and dance to all our favourite Halloween Songs. We’ll also play Bobbin Apples and “Pin the Tail”. Then we’ll watch another Halloween movie and enjoy another tradition of Halloween- eating sweets!
All week long we’ll have our basket of Halloween books and craft activities for the kids to dip into when they want, we’re also trying to complete our Halloween Family Film Challenge.
These are some ideas to celebrate Halloween half term this week, don’t worry if you don’t have time to do them all, do what works for you and your family and just enjoy making the memories.
Stay safe and stay home, how are you planning to celebrate Halloween this year?
Pin this post for later:
