Creepy Crafts and Ghoulish Goodies to Get Your Children in the Mood for Halloween

If your children are already counting the days ‘til they can go Trick or Treating, we’ve got some spooktacular ideas for Halloween crafts and ghostly goodies that will get them in the mood and keep them occupied between now and October 31^st.

Pumpkin carving

Of course, this is the one activity that kids (and adults!) tend to love more than any other. Here are some tips for creating a ghoulish grinning Pumpkin:

• Choose a perfect pumpkin, ideally, that has smooth skin with no soft spots and a fairly flat surface for carving into.
• Find a nice sturdy worksurface that is well-lit and use proper pumpkin carving tools.
• There are lots of pumpkin designs online that you can use as inspiration, or why not improvise? You can press cookie cutters into the pumpkin to make indentations that children can trace.
• Never leave young children alone to carve a pumpkin. If they want to decorate a pumpkin, you could get them to paint a face on it and use glitter and stick-on feathers/felt.
• If you don’t want to risk real candles, why not try battery-powered tealights instead?

Spooky window decorations

Use wax paper and crayons or tissue paper and cut out spooky shapes like Pumpkins, bats and ghosts. You can use Sellotape to fix them to the windows so the sun can shine through them.

Trick or Treat buckets

Lots of shops sell Trick or Treat buckets in the run-up to Halloween. Why not get the children to decorate the outside using poster paint? Or, you could use disposable cups and punch holes in the sides to add a handle from string or ribbon. Alternatively, repurpose an old white pillowcase and get them to decorate it using fabric pens and glitter glue.

Happy Halloween banner

If you’re keen to encourage Trick or Treaters to call, why not get the children to make a Happy Halloween banner and hang it on your front door? Use a piece of card and decorate it with cut-out shapes. You could even get each member of the family to trace around their hands or feet and cut these out using different coloured paper or cards. Alternatively, use an embroidery hoop to create a wreath. You could wrap it in yarn and stick it on miniature pumpkins made from ping pong balls or cut out felt cats, bats and skulls.

Scary spoons

Wooden spoons are great for young children to paint and decorate. Use poster paint, cut out cards and googly eyes to create monsters, witches, wizards, ghosts and vampires. You can display them in florist foam inside a tall glass jar which you can also decorate for Halloween.

Ghoulish Goodies

Instead of buying sweets to give to Trick or Treaters, why not make some gorgeous ghoulish goodies instead? They will probably go down well with your own little monsters too, and they’ll enjoy helping you to make them. Here are a few ideas:

• Scary spider biscuits – make your own biscuits (or use shop-bought) and decorate them with squeezy icing and chocolate buttons. Oreos broken in half make brilliant bat wings.
• Terrifying toffee apples – too good to save for Bonfire Night, dip apples on sticks into a warm toffee mix made from caster sugar, golden syrup and lemon juice with a few drops of red food colouring. You could stick smarties onto the warm toffee to create eyes and little marshmallows as Pumpkin teeth.

Whatever you’re doing this Halloween have a super spooky, gloriously ghostly, terrifically treat-filled time.

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