A little Spooky Service...Trick-AND-Treating!

I usually try to not post ideas for activity's until we actually do them...but since we are doing this on Halloween I wanted to post beforehand in case anyone wants to try it out in their own family :)

Years ago I was serving in the Young Women's organization of my church and we did a really fun activity. The week before Halloween all the girls dressed up in their costumes and we went to several homes in the neighborhood to go Trick-AND-Treating. We would do a service project at each home (the trick) and leave them with some goodies (obviously...the treat :) I thought at the time that would be something really fun to do with my little family but my kids were still a tad too young.

This year my sis-in-law did this same activity with her YW and it got me to thinking...I really want to try this with my family. I tweaked it a little, but this is how our family is going to try and add some Spooky Service to our Halloween!

First up, I called around to a few local nursing homes in our area. I thought it would be wonderful for the kids to get all dressed up, make some treats, and deliver them to the people at the nursing home...all while providing a few tricks as well! ;) Make sure if you do this you talk to the activities director...then you can make sure they don't have anything already planned for the same time.

For our treats I wanted to do something simple,so we just bagged a bunch of store-bought Lofthouse Cookies and tied them with ribbon and a cute printable that said Happy Halloween. Then came the fun part....

The kids loved preparing their "Tricks" for all the cute people we will visit in the nursing home. We spent hours coloring pictures, practicing reading fun Halloween books and singing songs. They are so excited to share their tricks AND their treats! :)

We originally planned to do this earlier in the week, but things with work came up and we couldn't all make it (you gotta get there early before all the cute old people go to bed!) so we rescheduled for Halloween itself! It will actually work out perfectly, the kids will already be dressed up and ready to go. It will give them the opportunity to think about others and hopefully share some of the joy the give to me every single day to some people that could really use it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and please let me know if you try this out with your family. I am hoping this is something we can do every year...a little Spooky Service to finish out our Halloween season!