How to Celebrate Fall without Doing Halloween

If you don’t participate in Halloween, there are still many ways that you can celebrate the season and make it an enjoyable time for kids and adults alike!

Do you participate in Halloween? Although you might.. not everyone else may do the same!  We don’t participate so it’s important for us to have other things to keep the kids busy during this time because with so much focus on the commercialism of the day, kids are bound to ask!

Halloween can be a difficult time for those that don’t do Halloween. So we decided to come up with a list of non-traditional Halloween activities for you.

How to Celebrate Fall without Doing Halloween

There are a multitude of ways to celebrate fall without participating in the Halloween festivities. From day trips to movie night, pumpkin patch visits and more – here are a few helpful ideas!

See Arizona

Hop in the car and see everything that Arizona has to offer.    The weather is finally cooling down and this is the perfect time to do all those things that the weather was too hot for over the summer.

Head up to Flagstaff and visit the Lowell Observatory, or Sunset Crater one weekend. You could even visit Wutpaki National Monument since that is near too.   Head back down through Sedona and drive through the beautiful change of colors and visit Slide Rock National Park.

Arizona has so many fun places to see and visit, that are beautiful at this time of the year.

Visit a Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkins don’t mean Halloween. They are for fall and a pumpkin patch can be a very fun place to take the kids. You can go pick out a pumpkin to display through the fall season and usually find a corn maze too.

Corn mazes are a fun way for kids to explore what it would be like in a field of corn. It’s pretty fun stuff for you and the kids! 

Schnepf Farms is a popular place to visit the Corn Maze, as is Tolmachoff Farms, AND if you are in the East valley you can also find one at Vertuccio Farms in Mesa, too.

Host a Cookie Making Party

Everyone loves baking cookies and what fun it would be to invite all of your friends over for a great big cookie baking festival. Have everyone bring a different cookie recipe to try.  When everything is baked and ready to eat divvy up the cookies so each person has a p late to bring home.

Take a Nighttime Nature Walk

Find a local park or nature path and throw on your pajamas and take a nice brisk walk on a beautiful fall evening. We take plenty of walks during the day but there is just something magical about walking under a beautiful starry night.

Take a blanket and a few books and spend some time reading under a lamp post or take a flashlight with you.   If you are in the East Valley, the Riparian Preserve is GREAT for this!

While you are there, visit the Gilbert Centennial Observatory – which is open Friday and Saturday night with free Admission.

Go Roller Skating

It seems that roller skating is more of a thing of the past these days with all the electronic games that kids have available to them. Head out to your local roller rink for a family night of skating! It’s a great way to sneak in a little exercise in on non-traditional Halloween activities list.

Don’t forget that if you are in Arizona &  have a POGO pass you can score FREE admission to Skateland, too!

Go to the Movies

There are plenty of great movies that don’t have anything to do with Halloween – not to mention kids love popcorn. Let them pick the movie and top it off with actually letting them get some candy from the concession stand.  Visit the dollar theater on $1 movie days to save yourself some cash.  

Host a Fall Party

Call all of your like minded friends together and host a great fall party!! It’s the perfect time of the year for a bon fire and all kids like to roast hot dogs and s’mores!!

Make it easy on yourself and have everyone bring a bit of food with them to share with everyone. You can have some fun fall activities scheduled like bobbing for apples, gourd toss or even put together a small carnival with tons of fun games.

Play Flashlight Tag

Backyard games are a great thing to do on Halloween when you don’t do Halloween.  Head out into the backyard for a fun game of flashlight tag with the kids. Half the fun of playing games with the kiddos is that you are actually playing with them.

It makes for a great deal of fun and some great memories to boot!

Go on a Hay Ride

Another non-traditional Halloween activities idea would be a hayride. You can visit any of several Farms in the Phoenix area to do this – Schnepf Farms, Tolmachoff Farms, Vertuccio Farms & More.

We are huge fans of Vertuccio Farms in Mesa – it’s extremely affordable for the entire family & many of their activities are included in the price.

What other ideas can you come up with for non-traditional Halloween activities with your family?