With a lot of the country heading into the third tier and lockdown becoming an ever more common situation a lot of us have embraced what we have within our 4 walls and adapted our usual social events to smaller family only affairs. Halloween is the next occasion to fall foul to Covid-19. But that doesn’t mean the fun has to stop! Nor does it mean you have to go out and spend a fortune. The three ideas below utilise things most of us have around the house – all you need to do is provide the sweets!
1 – A spooky treasure hunt.
Trick or treating may be out of the window this year but there’s no reason why the little terrors shouldn’t work hard for those sweets! How about an immersive spooky treasure hunt? Get them dressed up, create a spooky atmosphere by lighting some candles (turn the big light off) and play some creepy background music – We found this great playlist on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3eo12W7eQrcOKMeVFh6bMa#_=_
You will need:
- The prize – It doesn’t have to be sweets (somehow I don’t think a bag of carrot sticks will fly but it’s totally up to you, if you don’t mind a few tears at the end of the night then replace the sugar with a healthy alternative)
- Paper & envelopes – If you don’t have envelopes, then fold up the paper clues – opening each clue will add to the suspense and excitement and let’s face it, we all need a bit more excitement in our lives at the moment!
- A bit of imagination! Make the clues challenging but not so hard that they won’t have a hope in hell of solving them! And don’t make it too long that they lose interest, 6-10 clues should be enough to keep them entertained for around 15-20 minutes.
2- Old but Gold Party games
When you think back to when you were a kid, which party game got everyone laughing? (…and drowning a bit but we won’t mention that).
You guessed it…. APPLE BOBBING! The OG’s are always the best, minimal equipment needed and laugh’s GUARANTEED.
In addition to this you can adapt our old friend “pin the tail on the donkey”. The concept works just as well for “pin the spider on the web” – Use a black bin liner and draw a web on it with Tipp-Ex, stick it to the back of a door, draw the spiders on some paper, cut them out and there you have it! Get the kids to draw their own personalised spiders so they can tell whose is whose.
Now, obviously loo roll is in very high demand at the moment but if you are lucky enough to have been able to get your hands on a 16 roll multipack you could use 10 of those rolls for a few games of “ten ghost bowling”. Draw or stick two eyes and a mouth on to each loo roll with black marker and you have ten little ghosts! Set them up in a pyramid formation – 4 at the bottom then 3, then 2 and one at the top. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can use a pumpkin as the ball (it will never roll in a straight line and I hate setting kids up to fail but we need a laugh too right?)
WARNING – Make sure you have prizes for these games because we all know that playing just for fun is actually no fun at all – show me the sweets!
3 – A surprise puzzle greeting card from Greeteo
Send them to Wizard school with one of these immersive puzzle greeting cards, delivered to your door complete with a wax sealed envelope for extra effect! The sender has the chance to upload a personalised greeting for the recipient, perfect for friends or relatives you won’t be able to see over Halloween this year. There are versions for kids, teens & adults. https://greeteo.cards/product/school-of-witchcraft-wizardry/
4 – Themed food
This could either go down a treat OR cause life long damage and we do not take any responsibility for the latter…
Hot dogs are a firm favorite with any child, and most adults too! You can easily create some severed finger hotdogs by simply cutting out a section of the skin at one end (a finger nail) and scoring the sausage part-way down. They look scarily real, but what is Halloween if you’re not spooked out of your wits?
Team those up with some mini jacket pumpkins (Jacket potatoes with a pumpkin face carved out of the skin)
A hand sandwich – Hand shaped cutters are readily available from online selling sites with next day delivery (or you could freestyle it) These work great with ham or peanut butter and jam.
5- A scary movie night
After a busy day/evening scaring themselves silly and stuffing themselves with all of the Halloween treats and food it’s time to settle down to a scary movie, grab the pillow and pick one of these recommended movies for kids at Halloween:
- Goosebumps (2015)
- The Adams Family (2019)
- The witches (1990)
- Beetlejuice (1988)
- The Exorcist (haha Just kidding)
Next Halloween hopefully things will be back to normal, but for now we hope you enjoy our easy to do at home, low cost suggestions :)