Halloween 2020: Celebrate with creative ideas from Adobe

The evening air is beginning to feel crisp, the first fading of summer green, the cozy embrace of a favorite sweater that’s been tucked away for months — these are all sure signs of autumn. And for millions of kids across the country, they’re also reminders that Halloween is coming up.

But Halloween 2020, like so many other celebrations and traditions this year, will likely be altered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, leaving families afraid of October 31 for all the wrong reasons.

Like other COVID-19 guidelines, recommendations for how to celebrate Halloween will vary from community to community. While some large cities like New York and Los Angeles have already issued guidance against trick-or-treating, it will be up to individual communities and families to assess their risk and decide whether they will take part in the holiday’s centerpiece activity.

To help them make that assessment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has teamed up with the Harvard Global Health Institute to publish a color-coded, county-level COVID-19 risk map of the entire United States, along with a list of safe Halloween activities at each of four risk levels. In areas with the lowest risk level, the CDC gives trick-or-treating the green light (with the usual COVID-19 safety measures).

Still, many families may still want to prepare for Halloween activities at home. Try some of the ideas below.

Halloween crafts for kids

These simple Halloween art projects will be sure to keep you and your little ones howling at the moon.

• For some guaranteed gross-out fun for the whole family, try making a batch of spooky slime.
• If creepy-crawlies are more your kids’ speed, check out this climbing spider craft project from the San Diego Zoo.
• For young children, apple-print pumpkins are a cute and easy Halloween art project.

Don’t forget to try Adobe Acrobat free online tools to easily create and print instruction sheets for these Halloween art projects.

Halloween games for kids

If your little ghouls and goblins like competitive play, these Halloween games will be right up their alley.

Write down your favorite spooky characters, monsters, and Halloween movies on individual pieces of paper and throw them into a hat for a fun game of Halloween charades.

Hide Halloween objects or images around the house and have kids compete in a Halloween scavenger hunt to see who can find the most.

Fill multiple containers of different sizes with candies and have kids guess how many pieces are in each one. The closest guess wins the container.

Halloween cooking for kids

Get the kitchen cauldron bubbling with these kid-friendly Halloween cooking projects.

• Give the little ones a slightly healthier Halloween treat with these cute frozen banana ghosts.
• Combine a classic Halloween activity with a kid-pleasing meal by making these easy mac-o-lantern and cheese bowls.
• Get salty, sweet, and crunchy with infinitely customizable chocolate-covered Halloween pretzels.

Convert your favorite Halloween recipes to PDFs and save them to Adobe Document Cloud for easy organization, editing, and searching all year round.

Haunt inboxes near and far

Whatever your family’s plans this Halloween, Adobe Spark can help you share the fun with friends near and far. Use its simple social media, web page, and video editing functions to create a shareable slideshow of your spooky celebrations.

However you’re able to celebrate Halloween this year, stay safe and spooky.