Spooky Graveyard The Kids Can Easily Make

Easy Ways to Turn Your Front Yard into a Spooky Graveyard

Halloween will soon be here. If you’re used to decorating your door for those trick or treating, you may be interested in easy ways to turn your front yard into a spooky graveyard this year. 

You don’t have to break the budget to come up with the decorations for your yard, but you will want to plan it out first. I have seen some creative budget friendly yards!

Get the Kids To Plan, Create and Assemble The Spooky Yard

Getting the kids involved gives them something to do and hey, it’s a great fun family activity. It can help them put into practice skills that you have been helping them learn. These skills include planning, assembling, measuring, math, reading and more. 

Reuse Items From Around The House and Neighborhood

It is easy to find large cardboard boxes which are being thrown away. Ask any furniture or electronics store if you can have their boxes after taking items from them. These boxes make a great base for the gravestones and other scary props.

 Think about the size and shape of gravestones. They are often rectangles with rounded corners, cross-shaped or any number of other shapes. How large you make the gravestones will depend upon what size and how many boxes you get. Cut out the gravestones.

Paint all of the boxes gray or other natural stone colors. You can also use chalk (there is a chalkboard paint btw) in varying colors to create the look of weathered stone.

Check around in your neighborhood, painters may be willing to part with a little paint for free or a few dollars saving you some money. 

With a large, thick marker, write R.I.P. in large letters toward the top of the tombstone. You can write names on each of the cardboard tombstones with varying dates from different time periods.

Get creative, it doesn’t have to look like all the others. If you have an artist in the house, they can have fun with drawing skulls and other spooky, scary stuff on them.

Dig down a little bit to place the bottom of the cardboard into the ground. If necessary, place a stick or something behind the cardboard to help it remain standing.

Add Asseccories To Your Grave Sites

Mound leaves or maybe some black carnations or roses in front of the cardboard tombstone to make it look like a graveyard with recent additions. You can get these cheaper in your local dollar store. 

The more gravestones you add to your yard, the more “real” and spooky it becomes.

Other things you may want to include in your yard to create the spooky graveyard you seek are “ghosts” made from sheets or garbage bags. Don’t forget to put eyes and mouths on them.

Hang ghosts and spirits from the trees. Spider webbing will help make it scary with spiders lingering around or make it look haunted and abandoned.

Spider webs hung from trees and across the entry-way would also give the impression of a graveyard. What do you make spider webs from? Gauze-like material and stretchable webbing are available where costumes and party favors are sold.

You may also want to get some large orange garbage bags which are normally sold before Halloween.

Add Dim Lighting To Create a Spooky Ambiance

 Real jack-o-lanterns with candles can also be placed around the yard and on the porch to add to the atmosphere.

Use old milk or juice containers, paint them orange, add creepy faces. Then place battery operated candles inside to illuminate various parts of your yard. 

Strobe lights will give the impression of lighting, and dry ice can create fog which covers the ground. When it comes to strobes, please be mindful of children in the area that may be epileptic, the strobes are a trigger. 

Add Creepy Music To Enhance the Scare Factor

Find scary Halloween music which can be played during the evening while children trick or treating visit. If your budget allows, get motion detected music, it will surely make some kids jump when it suddenly plays eerie music.  

Add creepy, scary and tricky games to your yard!

I found this cool graveyard scavenger hunt, looks like so much fun. And here are some fun Halloween printables too.

Give the kids something to do while they navigate their way up to the treat bucket. At the bottom of your driveway, place a table and instruct them to grab a copy of a scavenger hunt or something tricky for them to do while they walk up to retrieve their treats. 

You can even get together with a few neighbors and create a multi-house scavenger hunt. At the end they get to collect a bigger prize, you can ask local stores for small gift cards or something to offer as their prize. 

These and the above ideas are some of the easy ways to turn your front yard into a spooky graveyard. Children will talk about until next year.