It’s that time of the year when we pull out our jack-o-lanterns and costumes and prepare for Halloween! Whether you like the spooky season, prefer the fall air and cozy movie nights, or are known for your trick-or-treating strategy, we’ve rounded up a collection of Halloween activities for families of kids and teens to enjoy together this weekend!
Activities For Families of Young Children
Make Halloween pumpkin stress balls!
Using a funnel, fill an orange balloon with flour, sugar, play dough, corn kernels, or rice. Tie off the full balloon, and sketch a jack-o-lantern face onto the ball. This fun sensory experience teaches kids fine motor skills and offers them a new method for calming down and regulating their emotions.
Cook Monster Pancakes!
Everybody loves pancakes! To make Halloween morning extra special, try adding food colouring to your pancake batter, creating stacks of multi-coloured monsters! Candy googly eyes can be purchased in the baking aisle of most grocery stores or made with white and milk chocolate.
Paint footprint ghosts!
Using white paint, cover your child’s feet one at a time, and help them to step onto a piece of coloured paper. After making their footprints, your kids can paint faces onto their ghosts, and even get creative with adding animals like bats and cats, clothes, or other embellishments!
Turn yourselves into a family of mummies!
Using toilet paper, wrap each other head-to-toe just like a mummy! This activity can be made even more fun with silly dance-offs to Halloween songs!
Play Halloween Heads Up!
Write Halloween words onto post-it notes and place them all face-down on a table. Take turns, have everyone pull up a note and stick it to their forehead without reading it. Then, everyone else must act out the word as if they are playing charades, and the person with the note must guess what their word is!
Play Truth or Scare!
Using these printable cards from Play Party Plan, play a family-friendly game of truth or scare to learn more about each other!
For more ideas, visit this blog post from Growing a Jeweled Rose.
Activities Even Teens Will Love!
Being a teen on Halloween can be tough as they start to feel too old for trick-or-treating but may still be too young to go out with their friends. Try the activities below to encourage their spooky spirit and have your teens join in the fun!
Ask them to help hand out candy
Your teens may not be interested in trick-or-treating themselves anymore, but that doesn’t mean they can’t greet the costumed kiddos coming to your door! Remind them of how much fun trick-or-treating was when they were younger, and encourage them to say hello to the neighbourhood kids when they come by for a treat!
Have a Halloween campfire!
With the weather cooling down each night, now is the perfect time to light a warm fire, don your warmest sweaters, and sit in camping chairs! Take this time to chat with your teen while roasting hotdogs or marshmallows over the flames. Maybe even share some scare stories (if you can handle it!).
Visit a pumpkin patch and carve a pumpkin!
For teens who prefer the crafty side of Halloween, challenge them to create their best jack-o-lantern! Pumpkins can be purchased at the Edmonton Corn Maze, the Jungle Farm, and Somerset Farms, or your local grocery store.
Watch a scary movie together!
While some Halloween movies are not for the faint of heart, many scary movies are available on streaming services to give you both a fright! Make sure to read movie reviews to prepare yourselves for whatever scares await! Blankets to hide behind and big bowls of popcorn are a must!
Halloween Events in Edmonton
Boo! at the Zoo – Edmonton Valley Zoo, Oct. 23, 24, 29, 30
Boo! At the Zoo is an all-ages event full of interesting animals and candy! Kids, teens, and adults are encouraged to wear costumes and bring treat bags to trick-or-treat at stops throughout the zoo while watching the animals enjoy the cool fall weather.
The Haunted Pumpkin U-Pick Harvest Festival – Prairie Gardens
This event is fun for the whole family, featuring a pumpkin cannon, a kid-friendly haunted farmhouse, ghost walks to Elm Street Cemetery, and the Pumpkin Corny-val with ghost stories, pumpkin bowling, pumpkin races, and more!
DARK – Fort Edmonton Park
Every Thursday to Sunday in October, Fort Edmonton Park is hosting DARK, an immersive and frightening Halloween event with three haunted houses, food trucks, and a Halloween “rave-yard”! This 14+ event is sure to scare even the toughest of teens and adults!
For those who are looking for a family-friendly event, Fort Edmonton Park’s Indigenous People’s Experience and 1846 fur trading fort are remaining open all fall as well during the day.
Whatever you plan to do this season, we at Crossroads wish you a safe and fun Halloween!