Start your Halloween celebration right from the beginning of October! Here is a list of 31 Halloween activities to make every day in October memorable for the whole family
For the past few years, I have made an extra effort to make December a fantastic time for the family leading up to Christmas. I was tired of getting almost to Christmas and scrambling to make it magical. And it worked! December is absolutely magical.
Funny thing is. . . Halloween is my husband’s favorite holiday. . . So why have we not been going all out and celebrating it the same way?
So this year I decided to make a plan like I do for Christmas.
How to plan your Halloween Calendar Celebration Month.
Step 1: Grab a calendar (or 2) for the month of October (one for a rough draft, since I always end up switching things around)
Step 2: Grab a paper and pencil, and list 31 Halloween activities. (you can download my Halloween list printable if you want).
Step 3: Decide which activities HAVE to be done on certain days (trick or treating October 31st, school trunk or treat 28th, etc.). Fill those in first, then fill in on the calendar all the rest.
Tip: I like to keep a good mix of ‘high work’ activities, surrounded by ‘low work activities’. What this means is that I wouldn’t put pumpkin carving and Witches Party next to each other. Instead I’d put make paper window hangings, or Hocus Pocus movie night, in between them.
Step 4: Determine what supplies you’ll need and BUY THEM ALL (as much as you can) BEFORE OCTOBER 1ST! I had to implement this hard rule 2 years ago when I started pushing back big activities because of shopping laziness. You are more likely to follow through on the activities if you have the activity supplies on hand.
Step 5: Hang the calendar on the fridge where your whole family can see it and keep you accountable. My kids get so excited about the activities, that there is no excuse for me to put it off.
Step 6: Start October 1st.
If all goes well, you not should have a well-decorated house, full costumes, a couple of parties, thematic dinners, and frightful treats all before Halloween! And as an added bonus, you’ll grow closer to your loved ones too.
To get you started on your own Halloween calendar, Here is my list of 31+ things I will be doing with my family this year.
- Picking Halloween Costumes (already got them? We always do a dry run to see what we are missing. At this time we also take costumed pictures with a story)
- Picking out the pumpkins
- Pumpkin Carving
- Farm corn maze (might be the same as picking out pumpkins)
- Couples only Halloween Party
- Family friendly Halloween Party (send out invites early)
- School Halloween Party
- Church Trunk or Treat
- Feetloaf (yes it’s happening this year!)
- Hocus Pocus movie night with scarecrow crunch
- Halloween themed popcorn balls
- Ceiling Bats decorations craft
- Halloween Art Painting Craft (find tutorials or inspiration. We love doing this and adding to our picture collection each year).
- Spooky Story Night around the campfire (with these scary treats)
- Coco family movie night (with this treat) P.S Technically this will be on Nov 1st. just didn’t want to miss it!
- Casper movie night (with this treat)
- Spider Craft
- Ghost Craft
- Witches Craft
- Skeleton Craft
- Vampire Craft
- Mummy Craft
- Making Halloween table decorations
- Decorating outside
- Decorating inside
- Go to a haunted house
- Play poor man’s cranium Halloween style
- play Halloween Pictionary
- Ghost game
- Witch game
- Trick or Treating and party at home!
- October Donuts from Krispy Kreme
- Bonus: Watch ‘Blink’ episode of Doctor Who. This is considered one of the greatest stand alone episode of any television series of all time.
Notes About The October Activity List
Ok, so about this Halloween Calendar list. No, I did not link to everything. But I should have. . . But I shouldn’t. . . My goal was to have a craft, movie, or game each night with my family. And that in the end, all the craft decorations would make a pretty awesome Halloween day, but it was so hard for me to pick just one spider craft, that I decided to make it generic so that next year, I can already plan on trying out a different one.
I also wanted to go an extra step and make something food-wise Halloweeny each day as well., even if it’s just adding edible eyeballs to normal food. . . I may have to print out another October calendar for foods. . . But you wanna be doing something spooky while enjoying those treats. So I’m worried that I am going to overdo it.
Since this is my first year doing this, I will be modifying this post after October to reflect exactly what actually happened, and the links to what we actually used. And probably links to our new plans for next year.
What would you put on your October Halloween Calendar List?
