A Not-Too-Spooky Halloween - Quiet Things to Do With a Small Child
Activities
6 calmer Halloween things to do with a child aged two to seven - colouring, counting stars, a paper bat, something orange from the oven, and a torch walk round the garden.
By the last week of October, most Halloween plans involve a lot of noise. Parties, costumes, a doorbell every few minutes, and a child who has eaten more sugar than dinner four days running.
These 6 activities provide the opposite. They are quiet, and need almost no resources, and they work just as well for a child who finds the whole season a bit much as for one who is thrilled by it.
1. Colour a pumpkin
Twenty minutes with a crayon is the most reliable calm in the house. There are six free Halloween colouring pages here - a smiling pumpkin, a ghost who only says hello, a bat, a cat and a spider's web. Print one, not all six, and let them choose which.
2. Count the stars
The bat page has three stars in the corner. Ask how many, then ask them to colour each one a different colour and count again. It is 2 minutes of counting disguised as colouring, and it works on a wobbly stool at the kitchen table.
3. Make a paper bat
Fold a rectangle of black paper in half, draw half a bat against the fold, cut it out, and open it. You now have a symmetrical bat, which is a small piece of magic at four years old. Hang it from a curtain rail with thread, and let it turn slowly. If they want to draw the wings themselves first, the bat colouring page is a decent reference.
4. Bake something orange
Halloween baking is mostly about colour: pumpkin muffins, orange biscuits, carrot cake with a cream cheese topping. The trick with small children is the taste bowl and one job each - baking with little ones has the five habits that make it work. Or skip the planning and open 25 Easy Baking Recipes for Kids, which is written for exactly this.
5. A torch walk round the garden
After dark, hand them a torch and walk the garden slowly. Everything looks new. Count the things you can see - a leaf, a stone, the shed, one very unimpressed cat. Ten minutes, no cost, and it uses up the last of the day's excitement in a way that ends at the back door rather than the front gate.
6. Tell a ghost story where nothing happens
The best ghost story for a small child has no scares in it at all. Mine is about a ghost who cannot remember how to say hello, so he tries "boo" in twelve different ways until the cat teaches him. 4 minutes, and I bet they will ask for it again. Let them add the twelfth "boo" themselves.
The point of the quiet list
None of this replaces trick-or-treating if that is what your family does. It sits alongside it, for the hours when everyone needs to stop. A child who has coloured a pumpkin, made a paper bat and walked the garden with a torch has had a full Halloween - and gone to bed calm.
If they would rather have a story than a craft, there is a list of gentle Halloween books for exactly that, and the read-aloud questions work beautifully over a colouring page.
Quiet is allowed. Even in October.