Get all your ghosts and ghouls in a row with these easy (but a little eerie) projects. They’ll help you celebrate all the fun and frights of Halloween, whether or not you’re trick-or-treating.

The weeks before Halloween:

1. Watch a flick. Have a Halloween movie night, but skip the blood and gore in favor of kid-friendly features like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Casper, or Hotel Transylvania. Pop some corn, mull some cider, and dim the lights to set the mood.
2. Deck the haunted halls. Visit a local haunted house on kids’ day. Or make your very own haunted village at home!
3. Sink your teeth into the celebration. See if you can actually eat a meal while wearing plastic vampire teeth.
4. Dazzle your dress-up. Are you ready with a cool costume for the Halloween season? If not, time to start brainstorming. Be inspired by your child’s favorite characters, or get a group together and go with a theme. Try superheroes, zoo animals, fairy-tale heroes, villains, a train, a subway car, or fruits and veggies.
5. Definitely “glow for it.” Make this simple glow-in-the-dark ghost bowling set and have a lights-out tourney. Strike!
6. Hide a sneaky surprise. “Boo” your neighbors. Fill a small bag or plastic pumpkin with Halloween treats, and then stash it at the front door. Ring the doorbell and run away before they catch you.
7. Decorate your trunk. Give your car a Halloween makeover (think giant teeth or a stringy spider web), and elevate the trunk-or-treat event in your neighborhood. Or check out the Boo at the Zoo in your area, where you can visit in costume and maybe even see beasts devour pumpkin treats.
8. Have some clean indoor fun. Drop tiny plastic spiders, eyeballs, or bats into clear liquid-soap dispensers. They’ll make handwashing a scream—and may motivate your kids to scrub again!

A few days before Halloween:

1. Make some “smashing” pumpkins. Host a pumpkin-carving party or contest, or just get creative with your family and carve pumpkins together. Inspire each other with a family theme, or check our no-carve pumpkin ideas for goo-free gourd decor.
2.  Bring decor to your door. Design a dynamic front door that celebrates the season. You can tack up yarn for a web and embed plastic spiders, wrap the door in gauze to make a mummy, take advantage of the door’s rectangular shape to create your very own Frankenstein’s monster, or wrap the door in orange paper and add black shapes to create a jolly jack-o’-lantern.
3. Craft awesome accessories. Go the extra mile and make some awesome add-ons for your costume. Glitter up a stick to make a wand, glue jewels on a headband, cut out a cardboard walkie-talkie, or practice your face-painting skills.
4. Pump up your breakfast. Start the school day right with homemade pumpkin pancakes. They’re super easy!
5. Make some mischief. The night before Halloween, play some pranks on family members (short-sheet their beds or hide a fake bug in a hairbrush).
6. Yuk it up with humor. Tuck a Halloween riddle into your kid’s lunchbox every day until Halloween’s over. Try this knee-slapper to start: What does a witch put in her hair? Scare spray!
7. Weave a tangled web. Create a creepy crawler maze with yarn or crepe paper in your hallway or playroom. Act like a spider and work your way through it.
8. Build a something sweet. Try a gingerbread mansion. Pick up a kit, or simply use graham crackers for your walls and roof. Then decorate with candy corn, mini sugar pumpkins, gummy worms, and more.
9. Give ’em an earful. Cue up a Halloween playlist. Include novelty songs and spooky sounds, like a ghoulish laugh or a witch’s cackle.
10. Hide…and let them seek. Stash a plush ghost or plastic skeleton somewhere unexpected—the kitchen cupboard, a cereal bowl where you store your dishes, or behind the shampoo in the shower.

On Halloween day or night

1. Do a Halloween tour. Scope out all the decorations in town or around the block. Hand out homemade awards for the most creative, the creepiest, and the downright scary.
2.  Avoid hungry trick-or-treaters. Fill them up with a DIY jack-o’-lantern pizza before heading out for the goodies. Make a Halloween pie using pepperoni rounds, olives, green-pepper pieces, or mushrooms.
3. Let the games begin! Gather a crowd and play pass the pumpkin or capture the ghost, or hold relay races in costume. Try a scoop-the-candy-corn challenge (like egg-on-a-spoon, but with candy corn instead).
4. Play doorbell Bingo! Hand out cards and earn points for spotting popular costumes (think emojis and political candidates), convincing fake blood, dressed-up dogs, unique candy carriers—whatever you can think of! When out and about, spot cool costumes, spooky decorations, and unexpected handouts.
5. Make no bones about it. Construct a vegetable skeleton and eat it later. Set up a salad bar at home and let the kids connect the knee bone to the leg bone using celery sticks and broccoli florets. If they eat a few “bones,” no harm done! Let them enjoy it.