Bored over the Halloween holidays? Activities for all kids in here!
We are about to hit the October half term holidays and we can already hear the ghouls whining on those misty mornings.
I'm Bored!' they call. 'I don't know what to dooooooo!'
By ghouls we mean our children of course ;) So what can we do to keep the wee beasties busy during this break? Well the first thing we are doing is digging out the I'm Bored Guide and creating that list because it is GOLD and what gets us through every school holiday. The list is where we go around our house and write down EXACTLY what there is to do or play with in each room. An activity audit on our own house if you will.
Now here's the fun thing about THE LIST in October is you can add spooky twists on all those classic play activities kids love! Here's a few ideas:
Build a haunted mansion out of LEGO or a pumpkin or ghost decoration for your room
Give your dolls or teddies a spooky makeover. Create a trick or treat costume out of a black bin liner and some ribbons. Add foil stars and witches hats made from cardboard tubes. Or use whatever you can find - Flo turned her doll (baby Allen) into a cute pumpkin!
Create a hoop on the ground and then grab a soft ball and scoot around pretending to play Quidditch. Pass the ball as you scoot and then shoot it to land in the hoop to score points.
Use playdough and a stick to make your own characters like those from Room on the Broom.
Create your own board game on a piece of cardboard and include spooky themed forfeits on certain landing spots like howl like a wolf, jump like a frog, do a ghost impression etc.
Add some batman wings to your favourite vehicles and speed them down a ramp to experiment and see if it makes them jump further.
Add some black food colouring to a sink or bowl full of water. Drop some toys in and see if the kids can feel in the water and guess what they are before revealing them
Create Troll Bogies Slime - get a mug and fill it 1/4 with chia seeds then tip into a mixing bowl, using the same mug measure out 1 and 1/2 cups of water and add to the chia seeds. Mix in a few drops of food colouring of your choice. Now leave for a couple of hours - you can leave it in a fridge overnight if you want. Now add 3-4 of the same mug of cornflour and mix thoroughly until its thick and gloopy and the consistency of the slime/troll bogies!
Design different ways you could carve a pumpkin on our free Pumpkin Template Activity Pack below.
Go on an autumn walk and create pictures with the leaves you find.
Use whatever you already have at home, and your child's favourite toys or games and see if you can put autumn twist on them.
ENERGETIC
Now those are all great ideas to get us started but how about something specific we could suggest? In our I'm Bored Guide the ideas for activities are split into four categories which you can choose dependent on your mood. The first category is ideas for when you have a lot of energy. So here is an idea for energetic kiddos who might want to run and jump about but the weather means we are stuck inside.
The Lava Bridge
This game is based on the floor is lava but instead of just jumping about we are going to turn it into a game. Get something you have lots of that your child could stand on as stepping stones. If it's small cushions, great. But it might be a stack of post-its or cut up paper, or if your house is anything like ours - large squishies! You need around 20 items.
Arrange these stepping stone items plentifully between two bits of furniture, or between the stairs and a sofa or between two rooms - anything you like that is clear and obvious. Now grab a dice and you're ready.
Each person has a go. They firstly move between the two places using the stepping stone items to stand on avoiding touching the floor because it is of course LAVA!
Once they've completed one crossing, they must roll the dice. Whatever number is rolled is how many stepping stones must be removed (by a person wearing "lava boots" of course). They must then cross again. If they complete the crossing without touching the lava, the get to roll the dice again and the process repeats.
The ideas is to see how many crossings you can complete before falling into the lava from lack of stepping stones. See if they can get a high score, beat you or their sibling, or just beat their own high score.
Alternatively, if you do want to get on your waterproofs and head outside into the autumn weather then why not collect some conkers and play some of these games from Daisy's website and first book!
CHILLED
Now obviously there are lots of spooky movies and TV shows you could enjoy. Or perhaps some Horrid Histories Audio books about ghostly and gory goings on. Maybe Casper the Friendly Ghost? Or Ghostbusters? Maybe the Worst Witch or the Isadora Moon series on TV? But here's an idea for a cosy slow day at home.
Grab some of the cardboard out of the recycling and stick it together into a haunted castle. Create turrets out of loo rolls and higgle-de-piggledy additions with lots of windows. Make it as big or as small as you like. Stick it all together then paint the whole lot black. Once created wait for it to get dark and then add some battery powered lights inside and watch it glow.
Alternatively, click the playing potions link below to see how Daisy set up Harry Potter potions for her kids (a post written during the pandemic) with all kinds of witches brew ingredients.
Earning
The next section of our guide is all about helping out around the house. This might be to earn pocket money or just to be a part of a team who earns a rewards (cinema trip, special day out etc.) but no matter what the reason why, it's always useful to encourage some good old fashioned chores. How about this idea of chore bingo? Pop up all the jobs that need doing on a certain day and write them in the template, along with the reward in the middle square. As soon as someone has done one of the jobs they get to cross it off the bingo chart. Once all are done, you can all shout bingo and then the rewards follow. It might be that you then head out for the rest of the day to spend their hard earned money or perhaps you treat yourselves to some special halloween themed snacks and settle down to watch a film. The choice is yours!
Learning
Learning opportunities are everywhere. How about using our guides and playing some of the games in them over the break to keep those brains ticking over. This spider web themed one is perfect for the holidays from our Spellings Guide!
Now don't forget it isn't just academic learning you could do. What about learning some new life skills? Perhaps you could use the fake blood out of the halloween box to practise some first aid skills? Or maybe use the ghostbusters song to shout 'who you gonna call? 999!'
Maybe you want to teach your child how to tie their laces this half term or maybe you've got a smelly pre-teen who needs a reminder on hygiene without it feeling too preechy. Our LIFE SKILLS guide is full of fun ways to teach all these things at home. It is written like a video game to turn these crucial lessons into lifelong learning whilst having a giggle together.
Because we are parents too, we know how tough it can be over the holidays when everything is expensive and the weather forces us all inside everyday. So with that in mind, we have dropped the price of our 3 favourite school holiday focused guides to help you out. You can choose from;
The I'm Bored Guide ideal for ages 6-12 to help them to independently think of things to do before saying they are bored! Ways to encourage creativity and fun based on their mood.
The Life Skills Guide ideal for ages 8 and up. This guide is perfect if you want to take the opportunity of your children not being in school to teach them some handy life skills in a fun and playful way.
The Anything Guide - this guide is lots of games to turn any learning you like into a holiday based game for ages 4 and up. Whether you want to help them with phonics sounds, times tables, spellings or numbers these games are totally adaptable to anything!
These are all price dropped for the whole holidays as our little gift to you! We hope you enjoy some of these ideas and don't forget to let us know or tag us if you play @2weeks2learn - we love to see it!
Happy Halloween, with love from
Daisy and Liz xx
p.s. If that wasn't enough and you still wanted more, Liz has some FREE halloween game ideas on her website and some of them have free printables so you can download, print and play straight away.
p.p.s. this photo is the only AI generated thing on this blog post! Everything else is create entirely from the brains of these two education-trained playful-hearted friends!
I initially came here to comment as a birthday gift but was genuinely blown away by the ideas you’ve given to keep the kids busy during half term. I even went back to your Harry Potter potions idea and given the obsession in my house is real I’m going to be one popular mummy tomorrow when I set it up for my daughter. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Xx
Live this such a fab list with lots of variety. So many ideas I shall be trying out. Thanks for publishing.
Such a helpful list of ideas, whether or not your family celebrates Halloween. I found this such a useful reminder to keep setting out invitations to play even now my children are older.