Halloween Activities

These are our favourite Halloween activity ideas for toddlers, preschoolers and children. These Halloween activity ideas build on numerous skills such as speaking and listening, sensory awareness, fine motor skills, recognising colours, art, sequencing, science counting and storytelling.

For All Ages

Clay Hand Ghosts

For this Halloween craft I used white air dry clay but you could also use salt dough. Roll the clay out until about 5mm thick. Then encourage your children to press their hand in to make the handprint. Cut carefully around the outside, we used a children's dinner knife. Make a hole at the top with a blunt pencil and leave it to dry.

As our clay was already white we didn't paint it. We used marker pens to decorate it and some plastic free ribbon to hang it up with.

Remember to write their name and the date on the back so you can compare their hand size in future years!

Messy Play: Witches Potion

Halloween lends itself so easily to messy play because of the colours, the textures, the slime, the smells. Messy play is an important activity for little ones to do on a regular basis because it encourages exploration, independent play, language skills and processing different sensory stimulus. Messy play can also help if your little one is a fussy eater to enable them to become more accepting of new textures, smells and tastes.

To create this Halloween messy play activity I used Gelli Baff, eye balls and spiders, wind up Halloween characters and sugar snakes. I added the fine motor skills tools and bowls because my son used to be reluctant to put his hands into a new texture.

Witches Potion

We love a science experiment and they are always a huge hit. This Halloween activity idea would work well with toddlers and older children. I used to regularly do this activity when I was a Special Needs Teacher because the reaction that it creates is quick and so appealing to all. Plus you can recreate the magic by simply tipping the bottle upside down. It is a great activity to look at reactions that different materials make but the language that you can use is fantastic for little minds’ to be exposed to.

For this Halloween activity you will need a plastic bottle, baby oil (you can also use any vegetable oil), water, food colouring and effervescent vitamin c tablets (you can also use Alka Seltzer). My son was still quite little when we first did this experiment, so I had already poured the oil and water into the bottle. He had to add the food colouring using a syringe and the effervescent tablet. If your child is older than they can pour their own oil and water into the bottle.

I modelled making the potion and described each step using clear and concise language. Then it was my son’s turn. The great thing with this activity is that, apart from when you add the effervescent tablet, the ingredients can be added in whatever order you little one wants to.

You can also create a magic potion with baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, food colouring and vinegar.

For Younger Children

Messy Play: Spider

This was a really quick Halloween activity idea to set up and is so visually appealing to toddlers and children. I used my trusty black tray and shower curtain to keep the mess together. I created the eyes by simply using white paper and sticking black paper on top and the legs were cut out using black card. I used orange lentils for the smile, buckwheat for the top of the spiders head and cinnamon for the cheeks and to make the spider smell a little autumnal. I added the little spiders from the previous Halloween activity to add a little colour and sparkle.

My toddler instantly recognised this as a spider and used wonderful language to explain what he could see: “big spider. Little spider on legs.” My son was 2 years old when we did this activity and very happily explored all the different sensory resources and moved the lentils and buckwheat back to their original places once he had moved them around. Really simple and effective Halloween activity for kids which encouraged wonderful language.

Please Note: raw lentils can cause a tummy ache if eaten. Please supervise your children whilst playing!

Spooky Pumpkins

This type of activity was a regular feature in my special needs classroom. It is one of the early stages in the Attention Autism Programme. It works really well because it offers such an irresistible invitation to attend, watch and communicate. This activity is quick and ideal for any child who struggles to keep their attention on one thing and needs some encouragement to communicate spontaneously.

All you need for this activity is black paper, some shiny pumpkins (mine are Halloween decorations from Sainsburys), flour and a sieve. I use my shower curtain to contain the mess from the flour.

I simply laid the pumpkins out on the black paper and poured some flour into the sieve. I then waited for my toddler to say go and I then sprinkled the flour all over the black paper until the pumpkins were covered. I then slowly and carefully removed each pumpkin to leave their print behind. My son and I repeated this activity a number of times, each time focusing on different vocabulary, for example counting, prepositions, adjectives. He then had a turn sprinkling and hiding all the pumpkins. Such a simple Halloween activity for babies and toddlers and we did this activity alot when my son growing up.

The Great Pumpkin Hunt

So this Halloween activity idea was inspired by my toddlers love of Easter egg hunts and hide and seek in general. I didn’t have quite enough pumpkins for my two to find so I also used some oranges as improvised pumpkins. Once you have hidden your pumpkins and/or oranges there is nothing else to do. My two absolutely loved this Halloween activity and as soon as they spotted their first one they were off! After they had found them all they then enjoyed hiding them themselves. This game was also great for practicing their prepositions eg under. on top of, behind without them even noticing it. A very simple but fun Halloween activity idea and would also be perfect if you were having a children’s Halloween party.

From 3 Years Old

Witches Cauldron Magnetic Hunt

My two find using these magnetic wands and magnetic coloured discs highly addictive. So combining them with the red lentils, spiders and cobwebs seemed like the perfect recipe for a Halloween activity idea for kids to try at home. Very easy to set up. Pour the magnetic discs at the bottom of a large bowl. Pour the red lentils on top. Add any spiders, cobwebs or other creepy crawly bits that you might have and it is ready. As soon as my children heard me say “Oooh I wander who will be able to find all the treasure in the witches cauldron?” They were desperate to get started. Once they had found all the discs, they plopped them back in and tried to each find a particular colour disc. Of course their hands got involved and who can blame them? There is something so wonderful about running your hands through lentils. This Halloween activity idea for kids makes a fantastic sensory experience as well.

This is not an activity for children who still taste their play. The magnets can cause a lot of damage if swallowed and the raw lentils can cause a tummy ache!

Handprint Spiders

This is a mess free Halloween craft idea which is simple to do with toddlers and older children too. The younger they are the more you will just need to help them. For this all I used was some black card, glitter glue and googly eyes. I traced around the outside of the girls hands twice ignoring their thumbs. Trace round the first hand and then get them to put the palm of their second hand pretty much on top of where the first palm was so that the spider doesn’t end up with a massive body. For younger ones cut the outline out for them ready to decorate, older children can cut their own spiders out and and then they are free to decorate their spiders as they want to. My two wanted to colour first then glue on top. A very simple Halloween craft idea that creates some great Halloween decorations to hang up at home.

Halloween Play Dough Activity

For this Halloween activity idea I made my own play dough and created black and orange play dough.

My two enjoy playing with playdough so I knew that this would be a hit. I added any cupboard sundries that I thought might work including black beans, lentils, corn and rice. I also added googly eyes and pipe cleaners. The little Halloween creatures they created were brilliant and took on their own personalities.

Room on a Broom

This Halloween activity idea is inspired by the wonderful children’s story Room on a Broom by Julia Donaldson. Room on a Broom was one of my son’s favourite books so of course I had to design a Halloween activity that involved the story.

This Halloween small world activity is based on the final pages of the book when each of the animals put a favourite item into the witch’s cauldron to make a new broomstick.

All of the resources for this Halloween activity, I had in the cupboard. I used green felt material. The animals are a mixture of finger puppets, wooden and plastic animals. I used sticks and pine cones from the garden, the bones are white plastic free pipe cleaners and the lilies are flowers from our dulpo collection. I made the witches wand from a reusable straw and cut out a star from yellow card. The flames under the pumpkin cauldron are cut out pieces of card which I sellotaped onto one of my son’s plastic bowls. I added our electronic tea lights to add a bit of magic into the scene.

My son was instantly impressed when he saw this Halloween activity idea. I got an “Oh wow” when he came down from his nap. We read the story together and when we got to the final scene my toddler added all the bits in the order in which they appear in the story. He really enjoyed using the magic wand to mix the potion as we said “Iggety, ziggety, zaggety, ZOOM.” We had read the story so many times that my toddler was able to say the magic spell independently.

This Halloween activity idea was such a big hit I kept it out for a few days so my son could continue to make his own magic potions.

Halloween Expressions

This easy Halloween art activity idea is great for toddlers and older children to try at home. No mess and very little work to set it up. All you need is some coloured card, black card and a glue stick. My daughter was suggesting different moods that we could recreate and it was fun to see her trying to recreate the different moods so we could see what happens to our mouths and eyes.

When we were sticking the face parts onto our Halloween pumpkins we talked about what if anything made us angry, sad ect. It was a great opportunity to talk to M about emotions. Once we had made them they stuck them onto lolly sticks and put on a show for mummy! Lots of fun and a great way to start to discuss emotions with older toddlers and children.

For Older Children

Halloween Lanterns

Together we made two different types of lanterns; two lanterns we covered in PVA glue and white tissue paper and drew on the facial features with felt tips. The other two lanterns we covered in an orange paint and PVA glue mix. We then used some acrylic paint to paint on the facial features. Really simple but wonderfully effective!

Halloween Pebbles

Head outside and collect lots of different pebbles. Once home paint them a base colour using acrylic paints. Leave them to dry. Once dry use acrylic paints to decorate them with their facial features.