Halloween: Harmless Tricks to Play on Your Kids

Halloween means trick-or-treat — we have the treat part down, but tricks are, well, tricky. When kids are young, candy and costumes are where the fun is, but throwing in a few tricks to help them get in the spirit of the holiday adds to the festivities. Of course, we don’t want to ruin Halloween for them so we came up with a few harmless tricks to play on your kids to get into the Halloween spirit.

Trick of a Treat When trick-or-treaters come to the door, hand them a bowl full of what you found in the junk drawer. Let them choose what they want to put in their candy bags. If they decline, pull out the real bowl of candy.

Mirror Messages Thoroughly clean the bathroom mirror. Steam up the bathroom and write a message on the mirror with your finger — you can decide how creepy or scary you want it to be. When your kids get out of the shower in the morning, they’ll be able to read the message.

Spider Spaghetti This one isn’t scary at all, but it might gross out your kids. Make a pot of spaghetti for dinner — make sure to mix the sauce with noodles before serving. Before they get to the table, stir in a few tiny plastic spiders (the kind you find at the dollar store) — not so many that they see them right off, just enough for a spider surprise when they start twisting their forks.

Menacing Mouse Mice are mostly harmless, but even as cute as they are, they’re frightening to find in the house. Don’t get a real one — a fake mouse can accomplish the right kind of scare without being terrifying your kids. All you have to do is tie fishing wire to the tail — the fishing wire should be long enough that you can leave the room, close the door and pull on it to make it look like it’s moving across the floor. When the kids are watching TV, start pulling the the fishing wire until it comes into their view and wait for the reaction.

Repositioned Pumpkins There are a couple of proud moments in a child’s life and one of them is admiring the first pumpkin they’ve ever carved. After the pumpkins are set out on the porch and the kids have gone to bed for the night, switch out the carved pumpkins with different pumpkins. You have two options with this idea: 1) trade them for very poorly carved pumpkins or 2) trade them for very elaborately carved pumpkins. Either way, your kids will be thoroughly flummoxed.

Of course, at The Lakeside Collection, we don’t want to traumatize kids, we want them to enjoy Halloween! We have dozens of Halloween items — both scary and fun — to celebrate our most haunting holiday of the year.