Skip to main content

25 Ghoulishly Fun Family Friendly Halloween Ideas

October is here!  Have you picked out your Halloween costume yet?  Has your kid?  Besides trick or treating, Halloween is a great time for some other ghoulishly fun, family friendly activities.

Each year the kids and I volunteer at the local zoo during their haunted zoo event.  It's an affordable, family friendly activity for the entire family.  Our local zoo offers carnival rides, games, a haunted house and a chance to interact with creatures of the season like spiders, bats, and snakes.  

We also like to watch some of our favorite scary movies.  Not too scary though, I'm not a huge fan of scary movies.  Seriously, there are some movies that still give me nightmares so we keep it light but cringe worthy. 

Here's our list of 25 fun things to do during the Halloween season.
  1. Visit a costume shop and try on stuff
  2. Make popcorn balls
  3. Make rice crispy treats with candy corn
  4. Find the perfect pumpkin at the pumpkin patch
  5. Visit an apple orchard 
  6. Host a community Trunk or Treat
  7. Host a scary movie night and watch Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
  8. Go on a hayride
  9. Decorate your front yard
  10. Buy the "good" candy
  11. Stay in a haunted hotel
  12. Eat some candy corn
  13. Visit a state park and learn about nocturnal animals like bats 
  14. Gut a pumpkin and roast the seeds
  15. Build a bonfire and roast marshmallows
  16. Go to the Haunted Boo at the Zoo event
  17. Tour a cemetery 
  18. Read a not-so-scary bedtime story
  19. Decorate your porch
  20. Go trick or treating in a nearby neighborhood
  21. Make Halloween slime
  22. Paint small pumpkins and let air dry by the door
  23. Carve a pumpkin
  24. Visit a corn maze, be sure to take a flashlight if you're going at night
  25. Visit a pumpkin festival
There you have it 25 fab things to do this Halloween Season.  What about you?  What are some of your family's fave ways to celebrate Halloween?  




Comments

Vera Sweeney said…
These are such great ideas! I LOVE Halloween! It's one of my favorite holidays to celebrate with the family.
October 8, 2017 at 11:20 AM
Jenn said…
These are great ideas! I love to have my girls over to paint pumpkins. They get really creative sometimes.
October 8, 2017 at 12:14 PM
valmg @ Mom Knows It All said…
Apple picking is fun. I've always wanted to go thru a corn maze. Love watching old animated specials like Charlie Brown.
October 8, 2017 at 12:38 PM
Anonymous said…
These are great things to do this Halloween season. Making Halloween slime sounds wonderful. I just picked up the ingredients to make slime the other day.
October 8, 2017 at 4:25 PM
Marysa said…
This is a great Halloween bucket list. We do love some fun fall activities. I would like to try to do a bunch of these, they are all wonderful ideas.
October 8, 2017 at 8:39 PM
Alli Smith said…
What fun ideas! We always participate in Trunk or Treat at our church. We have so many cute kids in adorable costumes stop by. This year, I'm going to be Pocahontas. I can hardly wait!
October 9, 2017 at 6:15 AM
Sarah Bailey said…
These are some absolutely awesome ideas, I really want to do something pumpkin related this year, perhaps visit a pumpkin patch, I haven't completely decided yet.
October 9, 2017 at 6:32 AM
chubskulit said…
It's been a while since we visited an apple orchard, I would love to do that again with my kids. These are great activities to do with family.
October 9, 2017 at 7:05 AM
Heather @ Girl Gone Mom said…
We enjoy shopping for all things Halloween. A visit to the costume section to do try-ons is a must every year!
October 9, 2017 at 7:27 AM
candy said…
No little ones at home anymore so we don't have to do some of these anymore. Fall is our favorite time of year and we do so many of these thing and have so much fun.
October 9, 2017 at 8:14 AM
Jeannette said…
There is a lot of fun ideas here. We just bought a costume for the kiddo and I would love to do a couple more things on this list. I will not sleep in a haunted hotel though LOL.
October 9, 2017 at 8:57 AM
GeekDad248 said…
It's not Halloween without watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on TV. One of my all time favorite holiday specials!
October 9, 2017 at 9:14 AM
Mimicutelips said…
We are October and Halloween ready. The kids have picked out their costumes. We have a trip to the farm planned out and we’re looking forward to it.
October 9, 2017 at 11:27 AM
Anosa said…
Such great ideas, I am not one for Halloween and often stay away from svcary movies but some of these activities I can certainly do.
October 9, 2017 at 11:35 AM
Miss Angie said…
These are such great ideas! We just did the pumpkin patch, and it was so fun to go out and pick our pumpkins off of the vine.
October 9, 2017 at 12:54 PM
Peachy @ The Peach Kitchen said…
Halloween is one of our favorite season and these are just great ideas on what else we could do.
October 9, 2017 at 1:41 PM
David Elliott said…
We have done a lot of these things already. But this reminds me that I really need to watch the Nightmare Before Christmas. That is definitely on our Halloween list.
October 9, 2017 at 3:52 PM
Pam said…
We've stayed at a supposedly haunted hotel a couple of times. We never saw anything but once I had some crazy dreams.
October 9, 2017 at 6:08 PM
Dogvills said…
My kids are grown so probably the ones we can do from your list is to decorate the front porch and do the bonfire thing. Miss those days when they were still little!
October 9, 2017 at 7:01 PM
Marysa said…
I've never made popcorn balls, sounds like a fun project. We love Fall and Halloween, and this is a great bucket list. Thanks for the ideas!
October 9, 2017 at 7:57 PM
Claudia K said…
Fall is my favorite time of the year. This year, I am going to make some popcorn balls and rice crispies with candy corn as you suggested. What a fun list.
October 9, 2017 at 8:56 PM
Unknown said…
My son is a teen now and thinks he's too cool for most of this, but I totally going to make candy corn rice krispie treats.
October 10, 2017 at 5:25 AM
chubskulit said…
This is a great list. A visit to a pumpkin festival would be a blast!
October 10, 2017 at 11:22 AM
Adriana said…
These are such great ideas for the fall! We love putting together a fall bucket list - so many fun festivities this time of year! We love to apple pick and then make a ton of apple pies! We jar sauce using tomatoes from our garden too. :)
October 10, 2017 at 2:50 PM
Cyn said…
These are such fun ideas! We always make caramel corn and watch Hocus Pocus together. Such a great tradition.
October 10, 2017 at 4:03 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jeepers! It's January Hop

Happy New Year! What better way to kick off the new year than with a giveaway! I am so excited to join The Mommy Island, The Kids Did It and 90+ other fab blogs in the first big giveaway hop of 2018! Here’s your chance to start the new year off with a win. One lucky Three Boys and an Old Lady blog reader will receive a $15 Walmart eGift card. $10 may not seem like a lot but it’s enough to stock up on some last minute Christmas clearance gifts. Trust me. I bought a 6’ Christmas tree WITH lights, 2 animal massagers, 3 Jelly Belly BeanBoozled Jelly Beans Mystery Bean Dispenser, Christmas cards and wrapping paper less than $20 during an after Christmas Walmart shopping trip. I was searching for some cough syrup when my friend’s kid spotted the Jelly Belly BeanBoozled Jelly Beans Mystery Bean Dispenser on sale for 50 cents. What a steal! The regular price is $10 so to find them on sale for 50 cents was a deal. We cleared the shelves. A few rows down we spotted some anima
179 comments
Click to read more »

Maple and Brown Sugar Air Fryer Bacon

I've been raving about my Instant Pot but now I have a new favorite... the Air Fryer.   O M G This thing is amazing!  I don't know why I was so late to the Air Fryer craze but I am so glad I am finally onboard.   I've been talking about getting one and then after my aunt posted pics of her new air fryer, that was it off to Best Buy I went.   I wasn't sure how big of a unit I would need but I figured the 2.5 liter would suffice.  I chose the Chefman Express.  It was priced on the shelves for $85 but online for $75.99 and my local store matched the price AND I had my Swagbucks Best Buy QR code so I got 500 SBs + 2 SBs for every dollar spent so that's another 170 SBs.  So, after discounts, my air fryer ended up costing me less than the sale price.  Woohoo! There were some fancy ones on the shelves with digital display but after checking the reviews I figured since I don't fry much this model would suffice. When I think of fried foods, I think
112 comments
Click to read more »

A Pit Stop at Sho Nuff Hot Tamales in Greenville, Mississippi

My cousin and I were driving along and our tummies were rumbling as we crossed the Mississippi state line on US-82.  We didn't really have any particular dish in mind for lunch but we started seeing signs saying "Hot Tamales". "Hot Tamales", my Philly cousin asked. "Yep", I replied nonchalantly.  "I remember reading something about hot tamales being a big thing here in the Delta."   We kept driving and finally decided we would have to try these famous Mississippi Delta hot tamales. Now to decide which one.  There were literally dozens of tamale spots.  We happened upon a restaurant called Sho-Nuff and decided it was the one. We parked and entered the large, delightfully decorated restaurant.  The wall was plastered with local and national awards in recognition of those hot tamales.   There was a sign touting Sho-Nuff as the winner of the local newspaper's favorite restaurant award and 3rd place winner in the annual  Delta Hot Ta
48 comments
Click to read more »