35 Simple and Fun Halloween Activities for Children

Who loves Halloween? Hands up! I do like spooky fun, all the parties and the dressing up. I think it’s a good excuse to unleash your creative self and have some fun. You can even plan something for every day in October, here’s a downloadable Festive Frights Countdown to Candy Halloween Calendar which helps you to plan a little bit of Halloween fun for every day. To help you with planning the daily activities, I have collected a few ideas for you. 

Little makers, crafters and bakers – and parents – rejoice!

Super Simple Crafts for Little Ones

Simple craft ideas for the little hands.

Goggly Eyes on Everything

One of the simplest crafts require little extras: in this case, it’s just a packet edible goggly eyes and stick them to anything with glue. It can also be edible glue. The little ones will find it hilarious!

Conker Ghosts

Place a conker in the middle of a paper tissue or about the same size of tissue paper, fasten it with a string and paint black hole eyes for the ghost. Very simple for the little hands.

Mummified Butternut Squash 

Grab a butternut squash or other hard-skinned vegetable, even pumpkin and wrap white sticky tape around it in mummy-style. Add eyes and other details with black market pen.

Halloween Bunting

Design your own or download a printable – depending on the skills. Then just attach them to a long string using either glue or a puncher to make holes for the string.

Spider Soup

Spider soup, anyone? There’s five great Halloween activities for toddlers on Sophie’s Nursery and they are all adorable, but I picked this really creative game which great for their gripping muscles.

Recycling Crafts

Use what you have and turn it into craft!

Ghostly Milk Ghouls

These are a great way to recycle your milk bottles! All you need is milk bottles, permanent markers and battery operated tea lights. This idea comes from A Rose Tinted World and I love it for the extra spookiness factor of it!

Ghost And Bat Bunting

Have too many eggs boxes going into the recycling bin? Why not turn them into some spooky crafts first? Check out this fun bunting from Blue Bear Bear

Ghost Pickle Jars

Any empty jars will do – but the after smell of the pickles will add to the character! Joke aside – the bigger ones can be easily used outside too. Just cover them with layers of orange or white tissue paper and place a tea light in it. You can use a led tea light for safety. Cut out black triangle shapes for eyes and mouth. If you add a string to the mouth of the jar, they can hang on a tree branch too. A fantastic and sustainable way to decorate.

Make Your Own Spooky Yard Sign

You will need pieced of wood planks for this, such as pallet planks and snap them into smaller pieces, then hammer another piece onto the flat plank pieces, which will go into the ground. A grown-up definitely need to help with this and supervise. With white paint (any think paint will do) paint spooky messages onto the signs. Let your imagination go wild! You ca use red paint for blood stains.

Toilet Paper Roll Craft

Toilet paper rolls are always a great and cheap way to create children’s craft and why not recycle them? There’s plenty of ways you can create Halloween crafts with them : Curious and Geeks has a bit of a selection on her blog. I love them all but my favourite has to be the cute bat.

Bake and Make Some Spooky Treats

Halloween Pizza

You can make your own pizza base and pizza sauce, find the recipes here: 

Easy And Quick Home Made Pizza Base And Tomato Sauce

Homemade Pizza Sauce With Extra Veggies Recipe

Then with a help of Halloween cookie cutters you can cut out shapes from sliced cheese and ham to decorate, add black olives made look like spiders or cheese strings arranged into spider web shape. Just a few example.

Food-Colour Fun

Even if you don’t have the time to bake from scratch (but if you do, here’s a simple cupcake recipe) you can just buy the icing sugar and a food colouring to make these bright orange and spooky black frosting. Here’s how to make frosting.

Vanilla frosting:

•   420g icing sugar
•   225g margarine or vegan butter (or real butter)
•   1tsp vanilla extract

Just add as much food colouring as you see you need (all brands are different, some only need a few drops but other ones will need half the tube/bottle).

Hot Dog Mummies

You will need:

1 box of ready rolled puff pastry 

hot dogs (vegan or traditional)

edible goggly eyes (double the number of the hot dogs)

sharp knife

Method: 

Roll out the pastry. An adult cuts it into strips (1 thicker + 2 thinner per hot dog). Then the children can pat dry each hot dog with a paper kitchen towel. Then wrap the hot dogs into the pastry strips. Into the pre-heated oven they go for 12-15 minutes. Add the google eyes when they are out of the oven and cooled down enough to touch.

Halloween Bark Bar

Super simple to make together with kids – but the wow-factor is through the roof with this spooky bark bar. Just melt a couple of bars of chocolate, pour it over to a shallow baking dish and smooth it out, sprinkle the top with your favourite, colourful sweets, sprinkles, nuts, etc – use a lot of orange, red and green!

Halloween Brownies

There are many ways to make halloween brownies:

• mix in orange coloured (or green) food colouring or top it with orange coloured cheesecake layer
• draw spiderweb on the slices with white sugar paste
• top them with edible goggly eyes and Halloween sprinkles

Edible Witch Wands

Such a simple yet brilliant idea from Daisies and Pie They are also perfect for Halloween parties and trick or treating. And of course a great way to get the children involved because you know… breadsticks and chocolate! I’m sure they won’t say no to those!

Squashed Spider Cookies

You can make your own cookies (how about this Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies) or decorate store bought ones.

You will need:

As many chocolate bonbons as cookies (Reese’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups or similar)

Double amount of edible googly eyes

Chocolate sauce or melted chocolate

Place the bonbons in the middle of the cookie (you can melt it a little bit so it sticks), secure the eyes with edible glue and make 8 legs spreading out with melted chocolate (use a toothpick for this).

Halloween Movie Popcorn

The kids will love making this! Simply mix popcorn with Halloween candy pieces, nuts, pretzels, chocolate buttons or dried fruit.

Pumpkin Chock Chip Cookie Monsters

I’m making these this year again due to the popular demand! This year I will try to get both children involved – wish me luck! Pumpkin Chock Chip Cookie Monsters

Spider Cupcakes

Another edible spooky yumminess: spider cupcakes from Baby Budgeting With these, you are going to be the star parent of the trick or treat route for sure and the kids would love them!

Trick and Treat Them

The children, I mean! Make these spooky but cute fruit treats – and hopefully they will eat them all! You can use any, but here are some ideas:

• banana ghosts
• satsuma pumpkins
• sliced apple monsters

Homemade Granola Bar Mummies

These are so much fun to make with your little people. The granola bars themselves take about 50 minutes to make and there’s no refined sugar added – I’m not saying they are super healthy but not that bad either. It’s also a good way to save the pumpkin carving remnants and turn them into something yummy. Here’s my recipe.

Marshmallow Ghosts Sitting on Biscuits

Simply plant an extra large marshmallow on the top of a biscuit and pour runny sugar paste (just mix icing sugar with some water until you find the right consistency) over it and let it dry. Then add eyes and mouth with melted chocolate.

Little More Advanced Crafts

Fluffy Spider

How cute is this little black spider with googly eyes? My girl is currently obsessed with pompoms, so we will surely make this. Find the method how to make it on Accidental Hipster Parent You can also hang somewhere or maybe make some creepy bunting.

Ghost Finger Puppets

For these little guys to make you will need some 

• white felt
• black felt
• white thread
• black thread 
• needle
• optional: glue, if you don’t want to sew
• optional: black marker pen, if you don’t want to sew

Here you can find a pattern too.

Halloween Treat Box

Find any large, used box and decorate them with Halloween print outs or magazine cut outs – then, you can use it to offer the sweeties when the kiddos from the neighbourhood are knocking on the door on Halloween evening. How cute is it? Find the Halloween Treat box tutorial here.

Easy Halloween Tree

I love this way of decorating the house, the halloween tree by Daisies and Pie looks like a good fun for all age! They’re easy to make and you can go wild or simple with your little Halloween ornaments.

Monster House

This has to be my favourite on the list: you can go totally wild with your imagination creating this monster house. Use anything you have got at home and design your own or follow this easy step-by-step guide by Motherhood Diaries

Mini Pumpkin Piñatas or Halloween Party Favours

Whether you’re preparing little treats for trick or treaters or for Halloween party attendants you might want to give out something a little different this year. How about these cute mini pumpkin party favours? You can find how to make them in this blog post.

Halloween Decoupage Letters

Spooky lettering to pop on the shelf for this Halloween!

What you will need:

• Paper mache letters
• Decoupage paper
• Modge podge

Idea by Sticky Mud And Belly Laughs

Halloween-y Nature Crafts

Leaf Ghosts

Such a simple yet great craft idea from Simple Parenting All you need to do gather some leaves, dry them out and paint them. This would make a cute bunting idea too.

Pumpkin Painting

An absolute classic, so couldn’t have left it off the list. Only their imagination is the limit! Any thick paint would do, but if you want to place it outside you might want acrylic paint, so it doesn’t wash off in case it rains.

Autumn Leaf Sun Catchers

The idea comes from Mummy Cat Notes and if your child likes messy and sensory fun like mines do – this would be great fun for them. Even really small children can enjoy this. Check out her exact method on her blog.

Door Decortions

Autumnal Leaves Wreath

For this craft you can buy a wreath base or make yours from twigs tied together. Then with some glue just attach the leaves and any small spooky items you’d like on it and arrange them with a battery operated, led string lights.

Halloween Wreath From An Old T-shirt

Another great idea – a great way to recycle an old t-shirt! Totally gorgeous and environmentally friendly. It’s from Blue Bear Wood and you can find the instructions on her blog. We will be definitely making this!