The weather’s not all bad in October so why not get children outside this Halloween to enjoy some fun outdoor Halloween activities?
When you’ve got excited children to occupy all day, an evening party or trick or treating fun can feel a long way away.
To keep the children and you from bouncing off the walls, we’ve got lots of fun Halloween ideas for children that are easy to organise and enjoyable to do.
Whether you’re entertaining children in a school or at home, here’s 6 top outdoor Halloween ideas for the playground, back garden, or park.
Spooktacular Play: Halloween Fun On The Playground
1. Shadow Pumpkin Sculpture Challenge:
Tell children you are going to use pumpkins to create impressive geometric shadows.
Show children artwork by Henry Segerman and Saul Schleimer. Segerman and Schleimer were mathematicians who used geometric carvings to create shadows on the surface below. Discuss what they can see.
Explain that the shadows are known as stereographic projections, and this was how cartographers used to create maps of the Earth.
When the light from above the pumpkin hits the 3D shape it creates a 2D image. However, the angles stay the same – see if children can spot this.
Take children outside. Explain you are going to work in the style of Segerman and Schleimer. Show children how to carve a geometric pattern using circles, pentagons, and triangles like Segerman and Schleimer.
Split children into groups of 3. Give each group a small pumpkin to carve and plastic shapes and paper. Children must plan the design on a whiteboard. Next, children need to draw around one of each of the shapes they will be using.
Children use the paper shapes to help them carve shapes out of the pumpkin to create a pattern.
After 25 minutes, go back inside to a corner set up to provide a dark space, shine a torch from above each pumpkin, one at a time, and have a look at the pattern created.
2. Pumpkin Bowling:
Have some serious Halloween fun whilst building ball skills by playing pumpkin bowling.
Create spooky skittles by placing a plastic creepy crawly on top of each empty water bottle which will act as a skittle. Use small pumpkins for Halloween-themed bowling balls.
Children score a point each time a plastic creepy crawly is knocked off a bottle.
Use our bowling alley playground marking for easy set up!
3. Ghost:
This fun outdoor game is perfect for the spookiest night of the year!
- Ask all the children to stand against the wall.
- Pick someone to be the ghost. They must go and hide somewhere. The ghost does not come out until they hear the end of the rhyme.
- Meanwhile, altogether the children count from 1 o’clock to midnight and chant: ‘Star light, star bright, I hope I see a ghost tonight!’.
- At the end of the rhyme children run to the other end of the playground but the ghost comes out at the same time and tries to get them. Anyone who gets tapped becomes the ghost and the game starts again.
Court lines are perfect for providing the area for this spooky game.
4. Monster Madness:
We all love heading out into the snow to make snowmen. Why not take the fun into October and challenge children to use natural materials to create a Halloween monster anywhere in the outdoor space?
From leaves to twigs, stones, conkers and bark, there are lots of organic materials lying around in the autumn which children can use to create their designs
Tell children their creations don’t have to be huge, and they can use existing structures, such as trees, bushes and play equipment, as bases.
Give children PVA glue and small squares of card to complete their creations.
5. Spooky Tales:
Set up the base of a spooky outdoor area and cover it in dark material. The den should be completely open at the front so it is not too scary for children.
Together, decorate the rest of the den with creepy crawlies, cobwebs, pumpkins, and any other ideas children have.
Give each child a torch. Go into the den together and sit in a circle. Start a spooky tale. Go round the circle and let each child continue the spooky tale by adding their own piece to the narrative.
Give each child a large piece of A3 black paper. Ask children to draw something they remember from your group story.
Go back inside together and ask children to write up the spooky story in the way they remember it or would like it to be told. You could even incorporate some of our letter playground markings for this ghostly activity.
6. Halloween Art:
For an outdoor art Halloween activity, you can challenge children to create a small-scale Hansel and Gretel house from natural materials.
Get children to use twigs and masking tape or Sellotape to make the base of the house. The house can then be finished with organic materials.
Find more innovative and fun outdoor ideas for children in our exciting collection of outdoor play equipment now.