Help residents celebrate Halloween by filling your facility with themed decorations for this fun autumn holiday! Here are 7 places in your senior facility to focus on:

Front Porch

Make the outside of your facility more festive by picking up a few harvest-themed items from your local garden center, like cornstalks and bales of straw, to decorate the front porch. In addition, add pumpkins to the décor. But instead of keeping the pumpkins plain, consider adding in fun colors by hosting a pumpkin-decorating contest for your residents, where they can use a variety of paints or markers to decorate. For the contest, supply residents with stencils to create punchy Halloween sayings like “Life is gourd” or “Pumpkin spice and everything nice.”

Another idea for the front porch is to add scarecrows. In fact, host a Scarecrow Competition, in which teams of residents compete to make the best scarecrow by using pillowcases, old clothes, and straw. Then arrange all the finished scarecrows along the front porch.

Next, focus on the centerpiece of the front porch – the front door. Use an orange and black festooning to decorate the door. Simply outline the door in the festooning or use the decoration as a garland to make a fun zig-zag pattern back and forth across the whole door. Then use a stapler to attach small Halloween cutouts to the garland.

Finally, if you plan to host fun evening festivities, add a bit of spookiness to the front porch by using a fog machine. Just add liquid fog juice anytime you want to create a dramatic and mysterious vibe.

Entry Way

Have fun with the entry way of your facility by adding in a few spooky cobwebs to set the mood for your visitors. If there’s space available, add in a CD player to play Halloween-themed music like Monster Mash. Additionally, set up a few Halloween props to get your visitors into the Halloween spirit, like a witch decoration or a large haunted house decoration. Encourage visitors to take out their phones to take selfies next to the witch and the haunted house.

Front Desk

As it gets nearer to Halloween, inflate orange, red, and yellow balloons each day to keep at your facility’s front desk to pass out to visiting kids. Turn the orange balloons into jack-o’-lantern balloons by simply using black permanent markers to draw jack-o’-lantern faces on the balloons. You can also inflate white balloons and use the black markers to create ghost faces on the balloons.

Be sure to keep a stash of goodies at the front desk for the little ones who visit. Keep candy on hand to pass out, as well as Halloween party favors like glow-in-the-dark bracelets, jack-o’-lantern pencils and black spider rings.

Dining Room Tables

Fill plastic jack-o-lantern cups with orange tissue paper and candies to use as table centerpieces on your Dining Room tables. For more playful centerpieces, simply place disguise glasses in the center of the tables for residents to have fun trying them on as they are waiting for their food. In addition, string Halloween paper chains throughout the Dining Room for added decoration. For a healthy yet spooky snack, pass out some oranges or tangerines that have jack-o-lantern faces drawn on them with a marker!

Room Doors

For the apartment doors of your facility, invite residents to decorate masks with paint and glitter. Encourage residents to hang the finished masks as decoration on their for Halloween. For those doors that are still bare, like office doors, liven them up by attaching jack-o-lantern cut-outs or creative Halloween signs that residents can make by decorating autumn-colored construction paper with paint and glitter.

Activity Room

String lots of orange and black crepe paper streamers throughout your Activity Room to make the room more welcoming this Halloween season. Hang pumpkin lanterns throughout, and keep bowls of candy and also Halloween leis nearby to pass out as treats for those who participate in your activities.

Hallways

Get residents in on the decorating by hosting a Halloween Hallway Contest, in which residents compete to decorate the best hallway in your facility by hanging ghosts, scarecrows, and pumpkins. To add even more décor, find a bare wall in one of the hallways to attach paper bats in a fun flying display.

Find more ideas from Notjustbingo on the S&S blog here.

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About Not Just Bingo:

Not Just Bingo is an online resource of fun, senior activity ideas for activity professionals of assisted living facilities. They have been providing fun activity ideas online since 2009, and continue to assist activity professionals across the country by creating meaningful and engaging activity ideas for their residents that go “beyond bingo.” Not Just Bingo feels privileged to help activity directors better the living experiences of their residents while demonstrating that a senior’s quality of life can actually improve when they move to a senior facility!

Want even more ideas each month? Visit www.notjustbingo.com for how-to activity ideas, monthly newsletters, and daily holiday ideas. You can also sign up for the Notjustbingo Membership to receive specialized activity ideas to keep your residents and staff engaged, active, and having fun!