Planning A Trick or Treat Hunt for Halloween

My children love Halloween. It’s not so much the ghosts, pumpkins and witches that they love I suspect as much as the opportunity to go round the neighbourhood collecting a HUGE amount of sweets. If you want your children to have the fun of Trick or Treat, but without knocking on strangers doors then how about a Trick or Treat hunt at home? 

If you are looking for a safe and easy activity for your children this Halloween which is fun, special and full of treats (in our case mostly sweets) then why not try a Trick or Treat Hunt? 

Wind up halloween toys in a lone walking along a railway sleeper in the garden hunting for trick or treat
Halloween this year might be different, but it can still be fun


How To Plan A Trick Or Treat Hunt


Taking inspiration from our annual Easter Egg Hunt around the garden I will be hiding sweets, treats and tricks for my children to find. 

What you need for a Halloween Trick or Treat hunt at home

(Shopping links in this post are affiliate links)

Containers to hide the treats in: 

You could repurpose any plastic Easter Eggs if you have any, but I decided to go for some hollow little plastic pumpkins that we can use for decorations for many years to come. 
I also bought some black and orange paper bags.
Another option could be to paint old egg boxes.

Setting up a halloween trick or treat hunt by hiding halloween treats around the garden for my children to discover
Boo!

Treats

In other words: sweets. If they are halloween themed sweets even better.

a pile of halloween themed individually wrapped sweet treats
It's the sweets that children love most about Halloween anyway right?

Tricks

With a 4 year old who has recently started to be afraid of the dark our tricks will mostly be halloween themed toys. This pack has glow in the dark spiders etc which will give them a little fright when they jump out, or maybe they’ll just complain they aren’t sweets!
You can make the tricks appropriate for whatever age children you have (see Extra Spooky Ideas below)

a line of small glow in the dark spiders (plastic)
Follow the spooky clues

Trick or Treat Bags/ Buckets

Optional Extras

👻Glowsticks
👻Torches
👻Halloween Decorations (we made fun halloween bunting last year and lots of spooky ghost crafts when M was small).
👻Jelly

a plastic halloween orange pumpkin in a pile of sticks
Will there be a trick or a treat inside?


Setting Up The Trick or Treat Hunt

Fingers crossed it will be dry and you can hide the trick or treat containers around your garden. If it’s wet then get the children in one room to read them a Halloween story (or watch some TV) while you hide the containers around the house.

Depending on the age of your children you will want to make them easier to find or harder. Because of the age range of my children I do a mixture of more and less challenging locations and put something for each child in each spot so one person doesn’t end up with all the swag.

A plastic hollow pumpkin which opens to hide treats in, sitting in a flower pot and lit up by a glowstick
Marking the trick or treats with glowsticks will make them easier to find at night.


Extra Spooky Ideas


👻Do the Trick or Treat Hunt in the dark, marking the location of each one with glowsticks so they are easier to spot.
👻Make some jelly, break it all up in a bowl and hide some of the treats in there. Cold jelly will feel particularly gross when they don’t know what it is.
👻Some of the more obvious locations can be made more challenging by covering with fake spider webs.
👻Have movement activated Halloween props around your garden so there is a strange noise or light when the children move around.


When you are all set up and your children are dressed up just hand them their trick or treat collecting bag (and maybe a torch if it's dark) and release them into the garden.

A fake spider's web spread across a bush makes a simple but spooky decoration
It's a great excuse to decorate your house (and garden) for Halloween


You can find everything you need for a Trick or Treat Hunt at home this Halloween in my Amazon Store here. 

Have fun!

***Disclosure: if you click through the affiliate links in this post and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you if you choose to do this***

A socially distanced halloween for covid 19, how to plan a trick or treat hunt


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