Halloween Coloring Pages

Halloween without the fright

Every page in this set is friendly by design. The jack-o'-lantern smiles, the ghost waves and blushes, the spider has big round eyes, and the haunted house is just a house at night with its windows lit. There is no gore, no monsters and nothing with teeth — which matters, because a large share of two- to five-year-olds find the scarier side of Halloween genuinely upsetting, and a colouring page should be the calm part of the season, not another thing to worry about.

That also makes the set easy to use in a classroom or at a mixed party. A pumpkin, a bat against the moon and a piece of candy corn carry no religious meaning and nothing a parent is likely to object to, so they work for children who celebrate Halloween fully, a little, or not at all.

From toddler to eight

• Easiest, from about two: the jack-o'-lantern, the friendly ghost, candy corn, and the bat across the moon — a few big shapes each.
• Next step, three to six: the Halloween cat, the witch hat, the bubbling cauldron and the trick-or-treat bucket, with more parts and a few small ones.
• Most detail, five and up: the spider web, with its dozens of tiny spaces, and the haunted house, which has the most to plan.

Ways to use them in October

Print a small stack in the first week of October rather than on the day. They are good for the wet half-term afternoon, the wait before a party starts, and the quiet half-hour after trick-or-treating when everyone has had too much sugar to sleep. A coloured pumpkin or bat also makes a decent window decoration, taped up facing the street for trick-or-treaters to see.

For a class, run them as a sequence rather than a single sheet: candy corn for colour order, the spider for counting to eight, the cauldron for inventing a spell and writing it down. Every page can also be coloured online with tap-to-fill, which suits a tablet in the car or a child who wants to try three colour schemes before choosing one.