Make Halloween extra fun for children with 15 playful activities, featuring silly ghosts, pretend potions, pumpkin games, and plenty of not-too-spooky Halloween fun.
Halloween can be an especially fun time of year for toddlers and preschoolers. There are pumpkins to spot, costumes to wear, decorations appearing around the neighbourhood, and plenty of excitement as Halloween gets closer.
You don't need complicated crafts or a long list of supplies to make the season fun for little ones. A cardboard box can become a silly monster, a few toy cars can make their way through a pumpkin patch, and favourite stuffed animals can get dressed up for their own Halloween parade. Simple activities can give children plenty of opportunities to play, create, move around, and use their imaginations.
Whether you're looking for something fun to do on an October afternoon, getting ready for trick-or-treating, or simply want to bring a little Halloween fun into your usual playtime, here are 15 Halloween activities for toddlers and preschoolers to try at home.
A few toy ghosts have somehow become trapped, and your child has been put in charge of the rescue mission.
Make simple ghosts from crumpled white paper, large white pom-poms, or familiar Halloween toys you already own. Place them in the compartments of a muffin tin, inside cardboard tubes, or around a shallow container, then loosely cover the openings with painter's tape. Children can peel, pull, and work out how to free every ghost.
Once they've all escaped, don't be surprised if children immediately put them back and start the rescue all over again. Preschoolers could also hide the ghosts themselves and challenge someone else to find them.
Halloween monsters have arrived at the salon, and apparently they all need very unusual hairstyles.
Draw several large monster faces on cardboard, leaving plenty of empty space above each head. Provide materials children can arrange as monster hair, such as strips of paper, ribbon, yarn, tissue paper, or other age-appropriate craft supplies.
Perhaps one monster needs extremely long purple hair, another wants orange curls, or someone may request three ponytails and a spider on top. Older preschoolers can use child-safe scissors to give their monsters haircuts, while younger children can simply arrange, stick, and rearrange the different materials.
If your toddler or preschooler loves toy cars more than Halloween crafts, bring the two together.
Draw roads across a large piece of cardboard and add a pumpkin patch parking lot with several numbered or coloured spaces. Then add small pumpkins made from orange paper or use larger Halloween objects you already have.
Children can drive their toy vehicles through the pumpkin patch, deliver pumpkins, park beside matching colours, or load pretend pumpkins into trucks. The cardboard can gradually become an entire Halloween town. Children might decide it needs a haunted house, a costume shop, a pumpkin stand, or a very important road leading directly to the candy store.
Turn a cardboard box into a monster that seems to be hungry for absolutely everything.
Draw or attach a silly monster face and have an adult cut a large opening for its mouth. Next, gather safe objects that children can "feed" to the monster. These could be balls, rolled-up socks, large paper shapes, blocks, or pretend food.
Then start taking requests:
Toddlers can simply enjoy putting objects into the monster's mouth and taking them out again. Preschoolers can follow instructions based on colours, quantities, shapes, or categories.
Make your own Halloween bowling game using empty plastic bottles or cardboard tubes. Decorate them with simple ghost faces, line them up like bowling pins, and roll a soft ball toward them. See how many ghosts tumble over with each turn.
Move the starting line closer for toddlers or farther away for preschoolers who want more of a challenge. Children can also experiment with rolling different-sized balls or arranging the ghosts in different formations.
Eventually, someone may discover that knocking over ghosts with a ball is nowhere near as efficient as running straight through the middle of them. That can be part of the game too.
Haunted houses don't always need to be dark, spooky, and filled with cobwebs. Give children the job of renovating one instead.
Draw a large house on cardboard or make a simple one from a cardboard box. Add several empty rooms, then provide crayons, washable markers, stickers, paper shapes, and other familiar craft supplies.
Ask children what the house needs. Maybe the witch wants a pink kitchen. Perhaps the ghost needs a bed. The monster might insist on a bathtub. Someone may decide the entire house needs polka-dot wallpaper and twelve windows.
Instead of trying to create a particular finished craft, let children decide who lives there and what their very unusual home should look like.
Set up a tiny Halloween neighbourhood using cardboard boxes, blocks, or containers decorated as houses. Give each house a different symbol, colour, or Halloween character.
Next, prepare a few "packages" using blocks, small boxes, or other safe objects and send your little delivery driver to work.
You might say:
Children can walk the packages around the room, push them in a toy truck, or carry them in a little bag. Once everything has been delivered, switch jobs and let your child decide where your packages need to go.
Set out several empty bowls, cups, spoons, and containers and invite children to create their own pretend Halloween potions.
Depending on your child's age and where you're playing, you could use water with a little washable colouring or keep the activity completely dry with large, safe materials such as fabric scraps, paper shapes, or other pretend ingredients.
The best part is inventing what each ingredient does:
Preschoolers might enjoy giving their finished potions names or telling you exactly what will happen if you accidentally drink one. Choose materials appropriate for your child's age and closely supervise water play and any loose materials.
Choose one stuffed animal to become the sleeping Halloween monster and place it at one end of the room and everyone else begins at the opposite end.
The goal is to creep toward the monster as quietly as possible. An adult can occasionally announce, "The monster is waking up!" Everyone must freeze before the monster goes back to sleep. Keep going until someone reaches the monster.
Then let your child become the person in charge of waking the monster. You'll probably discover that preschoolers have a very flexible interpretation of how long monsters actually stay asleep.
Turn a hallway or open play space into a giant pretend spiderweb using lengths of crepe paper or another easy-to-break paper material secured appropriately for your space.
Place the strips at different heights and angles, leaving plenty of room for children to move safely around them. Then see if your little spider can travel through the web without touching it. Children might crawl underneath one strip, step over another, turn sideways through a gap, or find an entirely different route.
After a few trips through the web, change the challenge. Can they carry a stuffed animal through? Move like a cat? Travel backward? Rescue a toy waiting on the other side?
Keep the course loose, supervised, away from stairs and other hazards, and never place material around a child's neck or where it could entangle them.
Halloween costumes have a habit of developing very serious imaginary problems. Set up a pretend costume repair shop with dress-up clothes, hats, scarves, stuffed animals, dolls, and safe pretend tools. Then bring in your first customer.
Perhaps a teddy bear's superhero cape keeps falling off. A doll has lost her witch hat. A stuffed dinosaur desperately needs a Halloween costume before the party begins.
Children can inspect each "costume," decide what needs fixing, and get to work using safe dress-up and craft materials.
This can be especially fun after children have chosen their own Halloween costumes, since they may enjoy becoming the costume expert for everyone else.
Instead of decorating mini pumpkins, investigate what they can do. Create a simple ramp using a sturdy piece of cardboard propped at a low angle. Place a pumpkin at the top and see what happens when you let go.
Then experiment.
Does a round pumpkin roll differently from an oddly shaped one? What happens if you make the ramp slightly higher? Can a pumpkin knock over a cardboard tower at the bottom? Which pumpkin travels farthest?
You don't need to turn it into a formal science lesson. Toddlers may simply enjoy rolling the same pumpkin down the ramp twenty times, while preschoolers may start coming up with experiments of their own.
Use lightweight pumpkins or gourds, keep the ramp low, and make sure fingers and toes stay clear of rolling pumpkins.
Dim the room and use a flashlight to create Halloween shadows on a blank wall. Children can experiment with their hands first, then try holding up familiar Halloween shapes or toys. Move something closer to the flashlight and then farther away. What happens to its shadow?
Once you've experimented for a while, turn the shadows into a story. A tiny ghost is looking for its pumpkin, while a giant cat appears, then a mysterious shape arrives that looks terrifying until everyone discovers it's actually a rubber duck.
Let children decide which character appears next and where the story goes.
For toddlers and preschoolers who are still figuring out how trick-or-treating works, practise at home before Halloween night.
Set up several pretend "houses" around the room using doors, cardboard boxes, chairs, or stuffed animals. Give your child a trick-or-treat bag and take turns being the person knocking and the person answering.
Practise simple parts of the routine such as walking up to the door, knocking, saying "trick or treat," receiving something, and saying thank you.
Then make the practice round ridiculous. Maybe a dinosaur answers one door. Grandma is pretending to live behind the couch. A stuffed bear gives everyone a block instead of candy.
For children who feel unsure about Halloween night, knowing roughly what will happen before they head outside may make the experience feel more familiar.
Your child's stuffed animals and toys have somehow made it all the way to October without planning their costumes. Clearly, they need help.
Choose a few favourite toys and use paper, fabric scraps, reusable dress-up pieces, or other child-safe materials to create simple pretend costumes.
A teddy bear could become a superhero. A dinosaur might wear a paper crown. A doll could become a cat. A toy truck may apparently need a cape for reasons no one fully understands.
Once everyone is dressed, line up the toys and hold a Halloween parade through the house. Put on some music, announce each participant, and let children introduce the costumes they've created.
You could even award completely ridiculous titles such as "Best Dinosaur Wearing a Crown" or "Most Likely to Lose Their Cape Before the Parade Is Over."
Halloween can feel very different to a toddler or preschooler than it does to an older child. A giant inflatable ghost may be hilarious to one child and completely terrifying to another. Someone may want to wear their costume every day for two weeks and then refuse to put it on when Halloween finally arrives.
Follow your child's lead. You don't need to fit every Halloween activity into October or turn each one into a finished craft to display. The potion station may become a pretend restaurant. The monster-feeding game might turn into an afternoon of delivering toys around the house. Your child may spend longer putting costumes on stuffed animals than wearing their own. That's all part of the fun.
Choose activities that match your child's interests, use materials appropriate for their age, and keep small objects out of reach of children who may put things in their mouths. For toddlers and preschoolers, a little silliness, plenty of imagination, and the freedom to play may be all you need to make Halloween feel special.
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