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Halloween activities & traditions for families

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Over 25 family friendly Halloween traditions & fun Halloween activities!

Is anyone else ready for the holiday season to start? I love Summer, but this year has been weird with all the closures, etc. I’m ready to cozy up this Fall and prep for all the fun Halloween activities with our kids.

Halloween is not just a one day holiday. It can be celebrated all month long because of all the fun family traditions that come along with it!

carving pumpkins tradition

Last year, Farrah was finally starting to get into the holidays and now that she’s 4 she is probably more excited than I am. Seriously though. We watch Halloween and Christmas movies year round at her request! Plus, we have her big brother who is excited too, so the holidays are really just a fun time for us.

So, I have some of our Favorite Halloween Traditions for you today. Most of them are kid friendly, and maybe only 1 or 2 might not be if your kids are still young like ours. Let us know which one you will try this year!

Fun Halloween activities and traditions:

Reverse Trick or Treating– I LOVE baking. So this is a ton of fun. Bake up your favorite fall treats (like these pumpkin bars) and take them to friends, family, and/or neighbors.

Tell Scary Stories by Candlelight– My 4 year old has the best scary stories. They all start out like this “it was a dark & stormy night, the phones were dead & there was no one there…” It’s a combo of something she heard on Open Season & Spongebob.

Either make up your own, or look some up online! If you do flashlights instead of candles, you can make it extra fun by telling the stories inside a fort made from blankets and couch cushions!

We love to record these, especially while the kids are young. I know these will be great memories one day!

Halloween Pillow Case Tradition-Okay, so we’ve never actually done this one. But I saw it here on SO Festive and just thought it was an adorable idea. Basically, you just make Halloween themed pillow cases every year. I think it would be fun to make these and them use them as your candy bag while trick or treating.

Some of our favorite Halloween traditions that are perfect for couples and family traditions! You can do these all month long! Start them this October!

Pumpkin Patch– You have to visit a pumpkin patch! We usually go to a couple. We have a great one near us with a petting zoo and horse rides for the kids. This is also, the ideal place to pick out pumpkins for the next 3 traditions.

Pumpkin bowling– Just pick out a smaller pumpkin, carve 3 holes for your fingers, and get bowling! This is a great party game! And, if you don’t want to get too messy, Target sells reusable pumpkins that you can carve. They’d go perfect with a plastic bowling set. Plus, you could reuse it year after year.

Pumpkin carving/decorating– Carve or paint your pumpkin! I’ve seen some really cool ones decorated with glow-in-the-dark puffy paint on Pinterest.

Grow your own pumpkins! This is a long-game type of tradition. You’d have to plant the seeds in July so that they would be ready in time. But what a great tradition. Plant jack-o-lanterns to carve or sugar pumpkins to use in pumpkin pie, etc!

Toast Pumpkin Seeds.

Pumpkin Nights

Attend Pumpkin Nights-It’s a Halloween festival with food, face painting, and a half mile display of over 3,000 hand carved pumpkins all lit up! They are in multiple states now!

Go Trick-or-Treating– It wouldn’t be Halloween without this. You don’t have to limit yourself to door-to-door either, most malls and zoos even do trick-or-treating now. Always be sure to inspect your candy before eating!

*update on this: I have a feeling that trick-or-treating will look a lot different this year. We are looking into setting up a small trunk-or-treat option instead with our close friends. Maybe we’ll all splurge on the normal sized candy bars 😉

Pass out candy.

Read Halloween books– We do this every day in October before bed. Here’s a list of our top 31 Halloween books for kids!

Make Pumpkin Bread– Major indulgence for me. I love my pumpkin bread as the occasional breakfast during the Fall. I’ve tried to come up with a healthier version, and I just can’t. Nothing compares to the carby, refined sugary goodness. I’ve decided that some things are just not meant to be healthy…

Drink Apple Cider-Halloween is the most appropriate time of year for this.

small child size hay maze.

Visit a Corn Maze– Scott and I always make fun of this one and then we actually get lost! (P.S. How adorable is that mini hay maze they had for the kids?)

Make decorations– I love getting all crafty this time of year! I’m not particularly great at it, but there’s a ton of simple crafts out there!

One thing we’ve recently gotten into as a fam is Color Me Mine. If you haven’t been, it’s basically a ceramic studio where you paint an item they provide for you and then they fire it. They have a lot of fun items to paint during the holidays.

Go to a Haunted House– Date night anyone?

“Boo” your Neighbors– Similar to reverse trick-or-treating except it’s anonymous. You ding-dong-ditch a plate of goodies to a family member or neighbor with a note attached, saying they’ve been Boo’d.

Make Fun Halloween Themed Treats– Like these easy Halloween yogurt covered pretzels

Make Caramel Apples!

caramel apple halloween tradition

Set up a spiderweb obstacle course for your kids to wake up to– They shared this on Chicken Babies and I thought my 5 year old would totally get a kick out of this! I can just picture him, with his eyes all wide, saying “oh my goo(d)ness!,” followed shortly by a fake faint lol He’s pretty hilarious.

Watch your Favorite Halloween Movie every Friday in October– Can you say Scary Movie Marathon?? Our kid friendly picks right now are: Hocus Pocus, all the Halloween Towns, and Open Season Scared Silly.

Visit a cemetery or legitimately haunted place in town and tell ghost stories– I’ve never actually done this. I’m too chicken, but I consider doing this every year lol

Make Spooky Food like these hotdog mummies! or these cute jack-o-lantern baked quesadillas!

such a fun Halloween tradition is to make spooky food. The kids have a blast when we do this!

Make Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Pancakes on Halloween morning

Go Trunk-or-Treating– I mentioned a little about this above.

Dress up in a group costume & have a photo-shoot! Tip: If you plan on taking pics of your kids in their costume, do it before Halloween. Usually on the day of they are too excited to get candy that they won’t cooperate with pictures very well.

Sometimes it’s hard to get kids to stay still for pictures. This year I bought a 5 ft posable skeleton to use in the pictures. The kids always have more fun posing if there are props of some kind.

Please share your favorite traditions in the comments below!

Some of our favorite Halloween traditions that are perfect for couples and family traditions! You can do these all month long! Start them this October!
Some of our favorite Halloween traditions that are perfect for couples and family traditions! You can do these all month long! Start them this October!
over 25 fun Halloween traditions to do with your family! these are great for families with young kids too! #halloween
Halloween traditions for families! over 25 fun ideas for family traditions to start this October! #halloween
Halloween witch with skeleton

Easy Halloween Yogurt Covered Pretzels - That Fit Fam

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[…] are delicious and pretty much foolproof. In fact, we may just add these to our favorite Halloween traditions list BECAUSE of how easy and delicious they […]

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