The nip of fall is in the air, which can only mean one thing: The fall festival season is here, and Halloween is right around the corner. Sadly though, for many, this year is going to look very different as some festivals have been put on hold, and many parents are uncomfortable with trick-or-treating.
If you're looking for fun ways to celebrate Halloween that don't involve trick-or-treating, you've come to the right place! Here are seven ways you and your family can celebrate without feeling like you're missing out.
1. Make your own costumes, and take family photos. Have some fun prizes for the most creative, out-of-this-world, colorful, funniest, scariest and judges' choice. Let the entire family vote on the costumes.
2. Create a Halloween-themed scavenger or treasure hunt that involves candy in all the places where they actually find the "treasured item." This can involve making fun clues. They could do the hunt individually or as a team.
3. Host a neighborhood Halloween Costume Parade for adults and kids. Families can walk or bike together while social distancing. You could even pool your candy and make bags ahead of time to hand out at the end of the parade. (The upside to this is you don't have too much of a sugar high for the kids. The downside is there isn't enough candy for the parents to steal. Just sayin'.)
4. Have a pumpkin-painting contest. Let everybody choose their own pumpkin, and give them a set amount of time to decorate it. You may or may not want to limit the materials they use. Categories could include: scariest, silliest, most unusual, most original, best use of materials, best traditional, most unique shape and most adorable. Winners could get candy, gift cards or some other fun prize.
5. Build a fire and roast s'mores. No fall celebration is complete without a bonfire and roasting marshmallows for s'mores. While you're eating s'mores, you can play Build a Story where one family member starts the story with a sentence and the next person adds a sentence to build onto the first one. See how long you can keep it going. If you want to get really creative, you can say the theme of the story is Halloween or fall or some other topic.
6. Plan a Halloween menu. Be creative. Let your kids help you come up with Halloweenish goodies like eyeball cookies, deviled egg spiders, gummy worm ice cubes, pumpkin-face cuties, "finger" foods, etc. (You get the picture.) Then have a Halloween/fall party with your family.
7. Play Minute To Win It or other friendly-competition games. We all know trick-or-treating involves getting the "good" candy you love as well as the "blah" kind you'll want to trade. So buy everybody's favorite candies and give them as prizes to the winners from the different Minute To Win It games.
No doubt this year will be different with many choosing not to have corn mazes, fall festivals, trunk-or-treats and trick-or-treating, but it doesn't have to be disappointing for you and the kids. Launching off of these ideas and some of your own family traditions, there's lots of fun to be had for sure.
Julie Baumgardner is president and CEO of family advocacy nonprofit First Things First. Email her at julieb@firstthings.org.
Julie Baumgardner