Fun Ways To Celebrate Halloween At Home With Foster Children

Are you looking for alternatives to trick-or-treating this year? Your house may not be haunted, but you can still give your foster children and teenagers something spooky to look forward to! Here are some frightfully fun ways to celebrate Halloween at home!

Decorate the house together.

A bit of decorating can help kids and teens get in the Halloween spirit — whether it’s store-bought spider webs or homemade halloween crafts. And don’t forget a few big, orange pumpkins for painting or carving! Post your creations online and have friends and family vote for their favorites.

Get slimed with a STEM activity.

Halloween Slime is a great STEM activity for kids of all ages (and parents, too)! This recipe at goodhousekeeping.com calls for five simple ingredients, including glue, green glitter paint, and googly eyes. Then, play brain surgeon with slime and a brain-shaped jello mold!

Monster Mash with your creepy crew.

Get in the ghostly groove by making a kid-friendly Halloween playlist. Then, push back the sofa, turn up the tunes in the family room, and have a dance party in your homemade costumes! Click here for clever, last-minute ideas.

Plan a not-so-scary movie marathon.

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which means you can plan an entire day of scary (or not-so-scary) movies, and staying up late is okay! Pop some corn, put on your comfortable Halloween pajamas, and check out this list of age-appropriate Halloween movie suggestions from Common Sense Media.

Prepare some eerie eats.

Halloween can be dreadfully delicious with festive meals, snacks and desserts. Browse online recipes for eerie eats and frightening foods, like Candy Corn Waffles, Hot Dog Mummies, Jack-O-Lantern Quesadillas, and Pumpkin Patch Brownies. Then, plan a Halloween menu the whole family will scream for. Older children and teenagers can even help with the cooking and baking!

Have a glow-in-the-dark treat hunt.

Halloween isn’t the same without the treats. Shop online for orange, black, purple, and glow-in-the-dark green eggs, and set up a nighttime treat hunt in the house or backyard. Filler ideas include candy, chocolate, and little trinkets, like stickers, temporary tattoos, spider rings, and other creepy-crawlies. Or plan a scavenger hunt instead, with a full bucket of candy for each child as the prize at the end!

Halloween may look a little different this year, but as you can see, foster families can still have fun while staying socially distanced. Click here for more information on Having A Happy Halloween With Your Foster Children. And to learn about becoming a foster parent in the state of Illinois, click here.

Every child needs and deserves to grow up safe and protected from abuse and neglect, and caring foster parents offer children support and stability when they need it most. At Camelot Care Centers, we specialize in higher-level foster care for children and adolescents that need extra support. We partner with our foster parents/homes to provide trauma informed care and additional services, including in-home counseling, parent support and training, tele-psychiatry, and therapeutic mentoring, to maintain children at the least restrictive, yet most appropriate level of care. Camelot Care Centers (“Camelot”) is a Child Welfare Agency