Halloween Ideas Desperately Needed!?!
Halloween Ideas Desperately Needed!?
We are having a Halloween party @ my church, but the majority going is younger children. Anyone have any age appropriate games, activities, and such for the party?
ALSO -- I had an idea for the little ones to make their own snack baggies, BUT I need creative ideas/names for the treats. I am going to put these snacks in cauldrons, but i need spooky names for them.
Gummy worms=Worms
Raisins=?
Pretzel Sticks=?
Granola=?
Peanuts=?
M&M's=?
Candy Corn=?
*Other ideas!?
Thanks for your help in advance!! ;o)
Answers:
Here are some games that worked really well for me:
Mummy Wrap
This is one of my kids favorite games for a school party! Divide the kids into smaller groups. One kid in each group is the mummy and the others wrap the mummy with toilet paper. You can have a winner for the best mummy or a race for the fastest mummy wrapped, or no winner at all.
To avoid problems with "I want to be the mummy!" you can divide the groups and have each member of the group draw an assignment out of a pumpkin for their "job". You need at least one mummy per group and you could assign one kid to wrap the legs, arms, etc.. or just let them go.
Make sure to set some ground rules. You might want to tell them NOT to wrap the head or face and throwing the rolls of toilet paper around the room probably is not a good idea! (The teacher will appreciate this rule.) You could even have them wrap the teacher or room parents.
Monster Freeze Dance
Play Halloween music and have the kids dance like monsters! Monster Mash is a good song for this game.
When the music stops the kids freeze in their monster positions.
The first kid to move gets to stop the music.
This is a good game for the end of the party since you can make it last as long you want
Mad Scientist Laboratory
Place each in a separate jar and label with body part name:
Item
Body Part
peeled grapes = eyeballs
cooked spaghetti: =intestines
Jello liver
rubber glove filled with water and frozen = dead man's hand
wet tea bags =hearts
cooked cauliflower= brain
piece of hot dog:= nose
pieces of chalk =teeth
carrot =finger
nut shells= toenails
fur =hair
To make spaghetti; cook, rinse under cold water, drain, when cold, mix in one or two tablespoons of vegetable oil, until good and slimy, store in plastic bag in refrigerator.
Game Setting: a dim room works best or use blind fold, tell kids they are in the laboratory of a mad scientist and that they get to feel the exhibits in the room.
Have each kid feel and guess what they really are feeling.
A Halloween sound effect tape is good background music for this game.
Halloween Pictionary
Plastic Pumpkin (or other container)
Slips of paper with one Halloween word on each slip (tombstone, vampire, bat, spooky, spider, mummy, and others)
Chalk board
Divide into two teams. One player from the first team starts by picking a slip of paper from the pumpkin. They use the chalkboard to draw items related to the word. They can not write the word. Their team tries to guess the word. Set a 2 minute time limit. The other team goes next. Keep rotating until everyone has a chance to draw. You can keep score and have one team win, or just play for the fun of it.
Musical Tombstones
This works like musical chairs.
A Halloween music tape works best.
To make the chairs look like tombstones, take a paper grocery bag and decorate with an epitaph. Use a black magic marker and make one with each kids name. Something like "Here Lies Matt" or "R.I.P. Steven", embellish with a ghost or skull. If the chairs are small, you might need to cut off some of the bottom of the grocery bag before you start so they will fit nicely over the chairs.
Candy Corn Race
Designate a starting line and a finish line. Set out a bowl full of candy corn for each player at the starting line and an empty bowl at the finish line. The players must use a large spoon to scoop candy corn out of the full bowl and then carry it to the empty bowl and fill it. They cannot spill any candy corn or use their hands! If any candy corn falls off the spoon, they must immediately pick it up and bring it back to the starting line bowl and start over with that scoopful.
Bobbing for apples is always fun!
Well, u can try having a costum party... and call the kids to design their own mask ( or maybe clothing too ). And perhaps u give them a section of self introducing bout the charactors they are in... and rates them... give them a prize for the best!
names... hmmm...
M&M's known as... the witch's magical bean.
Peanuts... dead men toes.
Pretzel Sticks... dried dead fingers( if it's a thick one )
Raisins... Dried frog eye.
Granola... Lizard loaf.
hmmm... do i help?
I have found some really good ideas and this will sound corney from Martha Stewarts web site. But let me give your cauldron snacks a go okay.
raisins=bats liver
pretzel sticks=finger bones
granola=freeze dried vomit
peanuts=kidney stones
m&m=black cat eyes
candy corn=witches teeth
The granola was really hard to think up. But really check out the site. She really like Halloween I mean she really likes it. I hope that I have been some help to you.
One game we use year after year is the fishing game. You have someone behind a box type or curtain enclosure & the kids pick up a fishing pole & drop it over the top. The person behind the enclosure hooks an appropriate gift for the age & sex of the child? Kids always win & are usually excited especially if you tug on the line, as if they have a bite! They are also always a winner!
Other popular games are a bean bag toss through a board with holes in it to get a prize?
If you have someone good with makeup, you can also do face painting,( little halloween items on the cheek etc).
Raisns= Bat droppings? (yuk)
Granola= wood chip surprise?
Cooked Rice= Maggots? (annother yuk)
Just a few ideas to help? I help do a Halloween Carnival at the Fire Dept. I volunteer as an EMT for! Good Luck! & God Bless!
mmm... pumpkin painting or carving, clearly with parents there to help, Making Halloween decorations, like ghosts or witches, having a cake walk! those are fun. You could have a "ghost story station" where clearly the ghost stories aren't scary at all, since they're young. As for names: raisins could be ants or flies, pretzels... terantula legs. that's about all i got. It sounds like a lot of fun though! i hope it's a great time!
Go to the following link to Pillsbury.com they have a lot of real neat ideas and recipe's
What fun! I used to run the Hallowe'en Carnival at my daughters' elementary school. Because ours was a fund-raiser for our after-school arts program, we always had half the carnival set up with Hallowe'en-themed arts and crafts, and half set up as games and challenges. Here are some that the younger kids used to love.
"Pumpkin Toss" -- make a big jack-o-lantern face out of cardboard, with cutouts for the eyes and mouth, and have the kids try to toss beanbags (or rubber pumpkins -- see the Sources field) through the holes. We'd give the kids a consolation prize (a spider ring or something) for trying, and a larger prize if they got the bag through the hole.
Pumpkin decorating -- get a bunch of tiny pumpkins and acrylic paints and let the kids paint faces on a pumpkin. The paint removes any worries about cutting themselves, and you also don't have to worry about putting a candle into the pumpkin when they're done.
Coloring -- we had stacks of friendly-looking Hallowe'en faces (a smiling skeleton, a Frankenstein monster, a couple of jack-o-lanterns, etc.) and a bunch of crayons, and the little ones would sit for HOURS (well, hours in their time, six or seven minutes in grown-up time :-) drawing and coloring these.
The "jack-a-pult" -- one of the dads made a simple (as in Wile E. Coyote simple) catapult out of wood -- you know, basically a see-saw that you whack with a hammer. We'd put a small plastic jack-o-lantern on one end of it and the kids got to whack the other end with a rubber mallet. The pumpkin would go FLYING! We set this up as a game/challenge, I think the idea was we were trying to get the pumpkin into a big plastic witch's cauldron or something. You got a little prize for trying and a big prize for succeeding.
We also did a Costume Parade which everybody looked forward to -- little and big alike. And something else the little kids just LOVED was a cakewalk. We had laminated Hallowe'en pictures (a ghost, a pumpkin, a bat, a full moon, etc.) that we taped down on the floor in a circle, and we also had smaller versions of the same picture in a bowl. To play, one kid would stand on each of the pictures, then all the kids would walk around the circle while some appropriate music played (I liked "This Is Hallowe'en" from "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). When the music stopped, the kids had to stay on whatever picture they were nearest (but nobody was out, it's not like musical chairs). Then the person running the cakewalk would draw a picture out of the bowl, and whichever child was standing on that picture got a cupcake. Once an hour we'd have a drawing for a BIG cake from the bake sale, and those took more than just one ticket.
The most important thing, though, if you're mainly expecting younger children, is to stick with the less scary images -- pumpkins, black cats, bats and MAYBE a "friendly" looking skeleton or a really cheerful ghost might be okay. You can fill in with harvest-themed decorations too, such as cornstalks, baskets of apples, sheaves of grain and the like. How we used to characterize it -- spooky things are fun, scary things aren't.
Happy Hallowe'en!
Better Homes and Gardens has some good ideas, too!
make chocolate cupcakes& put white icing on them draw with orange icing punkins OR... buy a holloween book at smiths or wall mart