7 Fun Halloween Traditions Families Swear By

Spooky season has begun, and we're so excited to celebrate with our kids! There are lots of fun ways to build excitement about fall, trick-or-treating, and Halloween throughout October. If you're looking for some ways to make this season memorable, pick one or a few of these fun traditions to make fall just a little more fun with your kids.

Visit a Pumpkin Patch and Pick Out Your Pumpkin

If you've always picked out a pumpkin from the grocery store or a park district event, your kids might be interested in finding out where it actually comes from! Trek out to your local pumpkin patch to pick one straight from the vine.

Your kids will get to see what colors and shapes they come in and enjoy getting a little dirty in the process. A lot of pumpkin patches also have other fall attractions, like hay rides, petting zoos, corn play bins, giant slides, and more.

Boo Your Neighbors

This is a new chain-letter type tradition that wasn't around when we were kids! Gather a couple of bags or buckets of treats and print out this cute little poem and ghost graphic. After dark, sneak up to your neighbor's porch and leave the treats and run away. They have to put treats on two other neighbors' porches.

Make sure you print off the little ghost and post it in your window so that people know you have been booed and don't get you again! We like personalizing each boo bag to our neighbors' interests, like adding dog treats or toys for their canines or a little bottle of wine for a new mom. Our kids love guessing who booed us and seeing if our friends figure out it was us.

Decorate Your House

Our kids absolutely love the giant spider web we put out every year. It's now home to several spiders, from very large and hairy to just big enough to be visible. Our neighbors usually go with the full graveyard theme, complete with headstones and skeletons popping out of the ground. There are lots of fun options, from pumpkins to inflatables for your house and yard, depending on how much space you have and how scary you want to get!

Once you've decorated your own house, you can walk, bike, or drive around your neighborhood to check out everyone else's decorations.

Watch a Fun or Spooky Halloween Movie

You can start small, with something like Spookley the Square Pumpkin or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for preschoolers. Progress up to slightly scarier or more complicated movies like Coco or Hotel Transylvania for early elementary school kids.

Bigger kids might want something live action with some thrills and chills, like Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, or The Addams Family. Whatever your family's speed is, you can find a seasonal movie with the right balance of scares and laughs.

Carve or Paint Your Pumpkin

One of our favorite pre-Halloween traditions is carving our pumpkins to match each kid's Halloween costume. Our pumpkins have been Elsa and Olaf, Lucy and Emmett from The Lego Movie, Wonder Woman and Captain America, and the flag of the original 13 colonies and a Pink Lady from Grease (when we stopped doing matching costumes).

One disadvantage to carving is that the kids don't really get to participate until they're towards the end of elementary school. We sometimes get a couple of extra small pumpkins for them to paint or put stickers on so they can enjoy the moment, too.

When you're done carving your pumpkin, you can wash, dry, and roast the seeds! We like making one batch of plain seeds with only salt, one batch with cinnamon and sugar, and a third with Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning. They have protein and fiber to balance out the candy that your kids are going to eat over the next week or two!

Trick-or-Treat and Sort Your Candy

Obviously, trick-or-treating is the main event for any family's Halloween. Pick a fun costume, dress up, and ring the doorbells in your neighborhood to ask for lots of tasty treats! We like to double dip by trick-or-treating at events at local shopping districts, malls, or zoos before October 31. Make sure you check your town's Halloween hours and rules before you head out.

Once our kids have obtained all the candy they can carry, they come home and count how many pieces they got and compare the total to the previous year. Then, they decide whether they are going to each have their own bowl of candy or separate it into chocolate and non-chocolate to eat throughout the next several weeks. We also ask them to take any candy they know they will not eat and donate it to the Ronald McDonald House or another local charity.

Compost Your Pumpkin

Avoid having a smelly squirrel trap on your front porch after Halloween by taking your pumpkin to a local composting event. Some allow you to smash your pumpkin into a pile of other pumpkins, while we've seen others that allow you to destroy your pumpkin by rolling it down a giant hill or even shooting arrows at it.

If you have your own compost heap, you can leave the pumpkins out for a couple of days, and once they get a little softer, break them up with a shovel and put them in your compost. I have one kid who loves the destructiveness of smashing pumpkins. The other doesn't want to see something they've created going into the garbage. Do what works best for your kids to get rid of your pumpkin in an eco-friendly way — they're not supposed to go straight into the garbage!

Once you've tried some of these Halloween traditions, decide what your family likes best and keep up the tradition next year. You can even create some of your own ways to celebrate spooky season with your little ones.

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