If you are looking for the easiest and quickest way to decorate your home for Halloween that will make the biggest impact with the smallest effort, then decorating your yard like a Halloween graveyard or cemetery is the way to go. Who doesn’t love a funny Halloween tombstone?
Easy Halloween Graveyard Ideas
Creating your own front yard graveyard with Halloween tombstones is fun and this is one time when no precision is needed and the kids can do it all! Making your own Halloween graveyard is easy to set up in minutes and take down in even less time. This is a great Halloween decoration solution for busy families.
DIY Graveyard with Halloween Cemetery Decorations
Let me start this with a tiny, little admission… I am NOT a big holiday decorator. But I realized that decorating for a holiday together like Halloween as a family is a tradition-building event.
I decided I needed to plan something that the boys could do so we settled on creating a pretend graveyard in our front yard. These pictures are from many years ago when this article was first written. Today I am updating it with some fun and new tombstones, graveyard decorations and Halloween cemetery decor fun that are available.
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Top Halloween Tombstone Decorations
Halloween tombstones are usually made from foam and very light. You keep them in place in your front yard graveyard with stakes that come with the tombstones.
It takes minutes to create your Halloween cemetery and after Halloween, you can take it down in minutes, remove the stakes and store the styrofoam gravestones in a large leaf bag on a high shelf in your garage or attic.
Top Skeleton Bones for Yard Halloween Cemetery
We decided since this was a really scary graveyard for Halloween, we needed some skeleton bones as well. I think it was a good decision, but which one to choose?
1. Halloween Sinking Skeleton Bones
This life size groundbreaker skeleton with stakes for Halloween yard decorations is one of my favorites because it is easy to install and good for some attention from those who pass by.
2. Bag of Bones Skeleton for Halloween
This 28 piece set bag of bones that comes in a bag is what we chose because you can use them multiple ways, not just for Halloween.
How We Created Our Halloween Graveyard
Supplies Needed for Decorative Graveyard
Directions for Halloween Cemetery Decorations
Step 1
Head out to the front yard with the kids with your supplies. Have them lay out where they want the tombstones to be staked first.
Step 2
Stake the gravestones and Halloween tombstones where you decided they should go.
Step 3
Have the kids decide what they want to do with the bag of bones. Do they want to spread them around or create a skeleton on the ground?
My kids decided to make a full skeleton on the ground which turned into an anatomy lesson…benefits of doing things together {giggle}.
Finished Halloween Graveyard Decor
This full front yard decoration for Halloween could literally be done in about 10 minutes from start to end. My kids really got into the fun and we willingly spent a little extra time.
Our Experience with Creating a Homemade Cemetery
This project starts with this: This is a strange rock wall encased area in my yard. Don’t ask me how it ended up this way. It made more sense on the house plans than in real life. The grass doesn’t grow well in this very shaded area and it functionally serves no purpose. It reminds me of a place that a tortoise would live. Since I am not ready for a 120 year pet commitment, let’s go with plan B! Plan B is a festive Halloween Grave Yard!
I really don’t understand Halloween decorations. It all seems very morbid, but stay with me…
The boys helped me pick out the tombstones, a.k.a. styrofoam grave stones.
Oh, and they wouldn’t leave without the plastic bag of bones.
I directed a general grave yard layout session with the boys and handed out grave stones. They set them up all by themselves and then arranged the bag of bones into a skeleton. It was then that we had a little Anatomy Lesson (after all, it was a home school day).
Our bag of bones was missing some MAJOR BONES. And despite my two summer cadaver-dissecting experience, I was not able to distinguish whether we were missing a Tibia or a Humerus…let alone the obvious Fibula, Radius, Ulna and pelvis omission.
You can see our bone anatomy activity here: Skeleton for Kids
Geesh! Anyway, the boys arranged our little graveyard without my assistance and I think it turned out… …frightfully morbid?
Maybe I should re-think that big, old turtle thing.
Materials
- 6 Halloween tombstone set that comes with stakes – the one we used is no longer available, but most like this one
- Bag of bones
Instructions
- Head out to the front yard with the kids with your supplies.
- Have them lay out where they want the tombstones to be staked first.
- Stake the gravestones and Halloween tombstones where you decided they should go.
- Have the kids decide what they want to do with the bag of bones. Do they want to spread them around or create a skeleton on the ground?
More Halloween Decorations and Fun from Kids Activities Blog
How did your Halloween cemetery decorations go? Did your kids love creating a graveyard in your front yard with Halloween tombstones?
