Social Distancing Halloween Window Letter Hunt

Time for a Halloween Craft & Activity that the kids can take part in AND enjoy. We have created a super simple, but oh so fun Halloween Window Letter Hunt for kids. A great social distancing activity that still involves the neighbourhood! This Halloween Letter hunt is part of our extensive list of Covid 19 Halloween Ideas for families to enjoy, whilst staying safe!

Back at Easter time, my neighbours and I organised an Easter Window Letter Hunt – prompted by Inner Child Fun‘s Egg Hunt idea! It was super simple and quick to organise and the kids had SO MUCH fun touring the neighbourhood, looking for the letters and unscrambling them to make a word…. I thought this is a really nice way to get outside in a socially distant manner and have some of the fun of going from house to house, without actually getting too close to people. So if you are looking for a social distancing Halloween activity, I hope you will have a go at our Halloween Window Letter Hunt (with free printable letters!).

You may also like our free Halloween Scavenger Hunt Printables:

COMING SOON – Halloween Cootie Catcher Scavenger Hunt

Before you grab your printable below… just to let you know we have some GORGEOUS Halloween Cootie Catchers heading your way in the coming days. Choose from 3 versions –

Halloween scavenger hunt (can be played indoors and combined with a candy hunt, as it also has some printables “tokens”)
Halloween Quiz (for older kids, ready to read and learn)
Haloween “blank” (to add your own quiz questions or Halloween Jokes – e.g. our FREE Ghost Jokes or Spider Jokes)

This year, they will be free for you to download.. so be sure to bookmark this page for updated links and grab your copies as soon as they become available!

How to organise a Social Distancing Halloween Letter Hunt

In our case, it is pretty straight forward… and there are number of ways to get this organised –

1. Neighbourhood Whats App’s Groups

We have a neighbourhood What’s App Group with around 80-90 homes on it.

I posted in the group, asking who would like to join in.
Then I picked the first xx people to respond and privately assigned them a letter.
Send them a link to this blog post, so they can download all the letters and print off the one they need. OR tell them to find a letter of a similar size online and use that!
Decorate your letter! Make it bright and colourful. Add drawings if you wish.
Hang them in your window on a certain date and by a certain time (e.g. we are doing the 24th October by 11pm, so the kids can go letter hunting all of half term holidays)

2. Neighbour Facebook Groups

As above!

3. Personally message people

If you don’t have social media groups, then may text message or email families that you think would be interested and invite them to join in with displaying a letter! Tell them to let their immediate neighbours and friends know, so they too can join in with the letter hunt!

Top Tips for organising your Socially Distant Halloween Activity

Make Note of Letters & Address: I recommend that you keep note of which households you have assigned a letter to, as it helps you later you on. It also avoid omissions of letters or doubling up accidentally.

Set a Date and time: Let participants know what day and TIME to put up their letters. Let run the letter hunt for 2-3 days to avoid “congestion” on the street. Inform the rest of the neighbourhood when it is live.

Walk the route: once they are all up, walk the route and make sure you can see all the letters and that none are missing.

Share instructions: Have at least one household include instructions next to their letter – so that families not on social media or in your direct contact can join in too. Keep it simple: “Find all the xxx letters and unscramble them to make a work”.

Prizes for a Social Distancing Halloween/ Candy Hunt

Again, you can use this Letter Hunt as a way to award sweets and candy to the kids, should you choose, NOT to do the traditional trick or treating method. E.g. you could –

for each letter found the parent gives the child a sweet (from your own stash) – this quickly then turns the letter hunt into a candy hunt!
once all letters have been found and unscrambled, the parents give their child a treat or small gift.
as the event organiser, you can have a “grand” prize to the family that finds all the letters first – maybe a bucket full of treats, a Halloween related book or something else appropriate.

Your Halloween Window Letter Hunt Printable

This printable is free for you to use. I created two sets to choose from:

Happy Halloween (14 households to participate) – printable includes all letters for both sets of words
Spooky (6 households) – printable includes all letters for both sets of words
Or do both and have a total of 20 letters to find

Our printable letters are free to download! You can of course search for your own letters online or draw your own letter from scratch! Whatever you prefer!