Most parents don’t feel comfortable with the idea of children trick or treating during this pandemic. As a matter of fact, many parents have stopped letting kids trick-o-treat for years opting more for neighborhood parties or stopping at the stores at the malls giving out treats. Kids have been through a lot already this year being away from friends and many attending school online. If you can, it’s important to celebrate the holiday at home.
Food Fun
Cookies! Decorating cookies isn’t just for Christmas. Make some plain sugar cookies and decorate them as pumpkins. You can also make Nutter Butter ghost cookies & spiders with dipping chocolate. Decorate a gingerbread house.
Other dessert options: Make caramel apples or apple chips. Take popular candy and use them in different desserts such as York Peppermint Pattie brownies, peanut butter cup cupcakes, M&M popcorn balls or candy corn and pretzel bark. You can find tons of recipes on Pinterest.
Have an indoor or outdoor picnic.
Activities
- Carve or paint pumpkins. Use stickers or washable markers to keep the mess down.
- Watch Halloween movies: If you are children are small we recommend Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest, Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Spookley the Square Pumpkin or True: Tricky Treat Day. For a bit older (but not teens,) you can watch Hotel Transylvania, Coraline, Casper, The Spooky Talke of Captain Underpants Hack-A-Ween, Annabelle Hooper, and the Ghosts of Nantucket, Spooky Stories from Dreamworks or Ghost Patrol. Teens might enjoy The Haunted Mansion with Eddie Murphy, Hocus Pocus, The Adams Family, Beetlejuice, or Ghostbusters.
- Make a haunted house.
- Have a spooky family dinner. Let the kids dress up and make their favorite foods. Decorate the table with a Halloween theme or make dishes like spooky meatballs or hot dogs (which is just croissant dough used to wrap around them to make them look like mummies.) You can cut eyes and a mouth into bread or a tortilla and make Jackolantern looking grilled cheese or quesadillas. Cut pepperoni into triangles and make your pizza look like a Jackolantern as well. Use green food coloring to make regular mac and cheese look spooky. Again there are a lot of creative ideas on Pinterest.
- Have a game night.
- Hide candy around the house and let kids search for it or create a fall scavenger hunt if you want then to skip the sugar.
Other blogs that may interest you:
Halloween Traditions Around The World
Haunted Hotels: A Room With a Boo
Top Haunted Cities in America