Family Friendly Halloween Activities

Knowing how to wisely approach the potentially troublesome holiday of Halloween is tricky. Sometimes, knowing how to make your decision is just as important as what decision you make. This October 31st, it’s worth thinking about how your family will participate in family-friendly Halloween activities.

Despite the negative perception surrounding Halloween, there are countless opportunities to appropriately enjoy this fall event with your family. When considering cultural holidays such as Halloween, we have the opportunity to carefully think about how to interact with others. Let’s explore some family friendly Halloween activities that can even spark purposeful conversation between you and your kids.

What to do on Halloween

When deciding what to do on Halloween, remember that you and your family’s decisions reflect your values and faith. Beyond this, you can teach your kids how to honor God through their actions. How you make decisions for your family reflects who you are, and more importantly whose you are.

Halloween Craft Ideas for Kids

Prayer Pumpkins

Throughout the fall season, you and your kids can spend some time with family-friendly Halloween activities. For your kids, one fun alternative to pumpkin carving is prayer pumpkins. Here are the steps to creating your perfect prayer pumpkin.

• Go to your local store or pumpkin patch and pick out pumpkins of all sizes.
• Encourage your kids to decorate the pumpkins with paint, stickers, markers, etc.
• Once your pumpkins are decorated, have your kids think of people to pray for this month.
• Next, have your kids creatively label each pumpkin with one name of a person they will pray for.
• Then, decide on a time each day or week when you and your family will select one or two prayer pumpkins to pray for the people on the pumpkin.

Consider using your prayer pumpkins to pray for people before or after dinner time. Or you can strategically place the prayer pumpkins around the house. So that whenever you see the pumpkin you pray for the person’s name on the pumpkin.

Christian Halloween Cards

Whether you participate in trick-or-treating or not, chances are people might still come by your door. Rather than only leaving a bowl of candy on your porch, here’s a Halloween activity for your family to bless your neighbors.

• Gather card-making materials such as colorful construction paper, markers, stickers, etc.
• Fold the paper to make hand-sized cards
• Using your Bible, create a list of encouraging and uplifting verses.
• Then, write down one verse per card and a note of encouragement.
• From here, your kids can design and decorate the cards!
• Finally, you can tape one card to a piece of candy or keep the cards separate to pass out individually on Halloween.

Writing notes of encouragement complete with Bible verses can provide an extra surprise for your neighbors or kids’ friends on Halloween.

Pumpkin Mason Jar Lantern

Crafts can provide excellent opportunities to discuss specific themes with your kids. Consider how you can use these family-friendly Halloween activities to talk with your kids about how Jesus wants us to be a light in the darkness. Here are the steps:

• Gather the following materials: mason jar, orange and black paint, paint brush, tea candle (battery-powered work great).
• First, paint your mason jar orange.
• After it dries, create a friendly face on the orange mason jar with black paint. Add some triangle eyes and a mouth!
• After your mason jar is completely dry, you can put the tea candle inside and turn it on.
• Finally, consider how you can talk with your kids about how Jesus tells us that we can be a light in darkness, just like your newly created Jack-O-Lantern.

This craft can also work with a normal pumpkin. Follow the same steps but instead of painting your pumpkin, you and your kids can carve the pumpkin, take out the seeds and pulp, and then put a tea candle inside.

Halloween Activities for Families

Meaningful Trick or Treating

If your family decides to participate in trick-or-treating, know that you have the opportunity for purposeful interactions. Whether it’s with your neighbors, friends, or strangers, you can aim to meet as many new people as possible.

While you and your kids go from house to house, see if there are other parents with whom you can build a relationship. Involve your kids in these interactions too! Help them see that Halloween is not only an opportunity to receive, but also to give.

After trick-or-treating, follow up with the people you met. Maybe you and your kids can invite them over for a dinner or get to know them better over the next month. Don’t let Halloween be your only interaction with your neighbors.

Attend a Church or Local Fall Festival

It’s common for cities to hold local fall festivals complete with hayrides, pumpkin patches, and photo opportunities. Fall festivals are an opportunity to spend quality time with your family as well as meet people within your community. Many churches also plan Trunk or Treat events within a local community. These events create a safe place for your family and kids to have fun in fall.  

Search around your local community for any events you and your family can join. If your church has a fall festival, you and your family can volunteer or participate to help your community. If your church does not currently have a fall celebration, consider starting a free opportunity to invite new families to your church.

Food Bank Collection

Though it is Halloween, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. As a fun and servant-hearted activity, your family can collect cans of food and other items from neighbors or from local stores. Then, your family can create baskets to give to those in need during the holidays.

Also, consider getting your child’s school involved. See if their class has food drives such as “Treat Your Neighbor Right.” This encourages your children’s classmates to give back during the fall festivities.

This could be an excellent opportunity to get your church community involved too. After collecting food, cans, and other items, you can volunteer to work at a local food bank. Or your church can hold a potluck dinner for your community.

These family-friendly Halloween activities are only the beginning to teaching your kids how to appropriately approach Halloween. This fall season, create new ways to bond with your kids while teaching them the importance of intentionally interacting with the people God puts in our lives.