Right when October starts, you can feel something change in the air. There may be zombies lurking there. Beware of ghosts and goblins, too! The vampires might be hunting you!
I get really excited and love everything about Halloween, if you can’t tell. It’s not just one day in our home, it’s all month! So here is my list of 7 Halloween activities you can do with your kids that will keep the spooky family fun going up until the big day. And none of them involve candy!
1. Switch up traditional bedtime stories with Halloween themed books
It’s so much fun to get into the spirit of Halloween with the kiddies each night before bed. There are so many fun stories, and I feel like I never get bored of them. Some of my favorites include Mickey’s Spooky Halloween and Trick Arrr Treat. And most recently we got Goodnight Goon and How to Catch a Monster.
2. Watch a different Halloween movie every Friday
Friday night is movie night, and there are so many fun ones to watch in the spirit of Halloween. My personal favorites are Hocus Pocus and Casper, but this list of 60 kid-friendly movies has a bunch that I would give a whirl.
3. Decorate for Halloween as a family
Get the kids involved in decorating the house or picking out a new item for the yard. It’s always fun to make it a family affair. This year we are planning on decorating our golf cart when we take it around with us, so we’ll be getting creative together.
4. Take a visit to a new Pumpkin Patch
Pumpkin patches are my favorite! They are outside in the fresh air, with typically tons to see and do depending on where you go. And they are great picture ops. Some of my favorite family photos are taken at pumpkin patches. These photos are taken at the Showcase of Citrus in Clermont.
5. Carve pumpkins together
After the pumpkin patch, we always find a weekend to carve our pumpkins. I love thinking through fun ideas for stencils (Check out my Handmaid’s Tale pumpkin!) and the kids are getting more and more involved as they are getting older. Plus we get to make this amazing pumpkin seed recipe that I’m addicted to this time of year.
6. Pick out or make Halloween costumes together
Planning costumes for the year is clearly a very important task. But it can also be super fun! It’s so much fun to hear what the kids want to be and use that as inspiration, like last year’s tribute to the final season of Game of Thrones. The kids wanted to be dragons for Halloween, so we capitalized on that opportunity to be Dani and John Snow.
Last year, Brett let the kids pick out his costume, and he complied. (I may have swayed them a bit to choose a black cat, to go with my costume 🙂
7. Check out local events and plan a fun evening out
There’s so much going on around this time of year if you plan ahead. Look into local events in your area and partake in the gouly fun! In Winter Garden, our city gets decorated with some amazing Halloween decor and they even created a spooky golf cart trail which is fun to go through at night.
Leading up to Halloween, you can have photo ops in Downtown one night and a ride through the trail on another.
There’s also a light show that turns City Hall into an amazing display of Halloween themed graphics that is a must see every year. And they show a movie outside a few nights throughout the month, showing a fun Halloween themed movie.
Halloween spirit is here! I hope you liked these activities to do with your kids leading up to Halloween and are excited about planning them. So look out for witches and werewolves, and have some frightening fun! Happy Haunting!
Fun,fun,fun!