6 Elements for an unforgettable, kid-friendly Halloween

1.   Get in costume.

While there are a variety of fun activities to do in the fall, many kids and families are focused on Halloween costumes. Whether you or your kids are looking to be superhero, a pirate, or a witch, renting or purchasing like new costumes will help to reduce waste this Halloween. After all, most people wear their costumes only once. Try swapping costumes with friends or making costumes from old clothes. Second hand clothing can be used for costumes or as fabric for creating this season’s Halloween costumes.

2.   Dress up your house.

In the spirit of the season, decorate your home both indoors and out with creepy indoor décor or cute age appropriate decorations and crafts made by your own kids.

3.   Host a party.

Bake some goodies and invite some friends to come over and help you decorate the treats (see #5 below).

If you enjoy the fall weather, visit a local pumpkin patch with a few friends and head back to your house for an informal pumpkin decorating party. Try these ten tips for a successful and fun pumpkin patch outing and pumpkin decorating party. You might just make it an annual autumn tradition!

4.   Watch a not-so-scary Halloween movie.

You know your kids better than anyone else, so use your best judgment in deciding whether the images in any Halloween movies might be too frightening, especially if your children are younger or have younger siblings. Here are ten Halloween movies for elementary kids picked by kids.

5.   Make and serve festive treats.

Halloween is often associated with lots of candy, but there are other fun and festive treats for your party menu. Enlist your kids’ help in the kitchen and have fun creating foods together.

Once the baked treats are cooled and ready to decorate, let your kids be creative. Layout all the tools and ingredients and join them in creating edible works of art.

Cupcakes are super easy to make and decorate. Turn your cupcakes into graveyards with sugar cookies or graham crackers and gummy worms or make spiders out of gum drops and licorice.

Use Halloween cookie cutters to create different shapes like ghosts, spider webs, bats, pumpkins, and fall leaves.

Mix up a batch of meringue or homemade marshmallow cream and pipe it into bones or other shapes. Let the kids get creative!

Be sure to offer healthy treats too. Find a good pumpkin recipe. Make cute little mini-pumpkins out of tangerines, mandarins, or oranges. Use small pieces of cucumbers for the stems.

Serve a fun seasonal drink like apple cider, hot chocolate, or pumpkin spice lattes in festive Halloween mugs.

6.   Be creative with your Halloween loot.

Instead of offering traditional candy or other sweet treats, fill everyone’s Halloween bag with useful items like colorful pencils, stickers, note pads, bookmarks, small boxes of crayons, erasers in fun shapes, or other inexpensive little toys and party favors that kids can use for more than one evening.

Need more Halloween tips and tricks? Check out the following Halloween guides: 

Charmin Calamaris

Charmin is a wife, mom of two boys and creator of the Momiverse. The Momiverse is an online magazine for busy moms (is there any other kind?) dedicated to helping moms make time – and take time – for themselves. She traded in her career in land use planning and environmental policy to become Chief Executive Navigator of the Momiverse. You can connect with Charmin in her "online office" on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

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