Tips for Halloween Carnival Festivities

Halloween is a time full of fun activities, games and of course costumes. Put together a Halloween carnival or fall festival for your students, neighborhood kids or any other group to bring out all the fun of Halloween in a safe environment.

Before planning games for your Halloween carnival, decide how large an event you want it to be, what age group you are planning it for and whether or not you want to have costumes at the carnival.

If you decide to make it a costume party as well as a carnival, having a costume contest is a fun idea. Kids get really into dressing up for Halloween, so they’ll love the chance to win a prize for it. (Check out our Costume Party TipZ for more ideas.)

You can hold your Halloween carnival in your basement, garage, yard, town hall, school gym, community center, anywhere!

Set up games for kids to play. You can let them play whatever they want or sell tickets for them to use to play the games. Some fun carnival games include:

• A beanbag toss
• A milk-bottle toss. Set up milk bottles in a pyramid shape and let kids knock them over with softballs.
• Bozo game. This one is trickier than it looks and was made famous by the TV clown. Kids should try to toss a ping-pong ball into one of several small jars. The smaller the mouth of the jar, the harder it will be. Ping-pong balls will bounce out of jars too!
• Gone fishin’. Kids toss a fishing line with a clothespin attached over a cardboard barrier. ON the other side, volunteers clip a prize to the line and toss it back. This is a fun game for little kids.
• Duck pond. Write numbers on the bottom of rubber ducks and float them in a wading pool. Kids pick up the ducks and win prizes according to the number they pick.
• Lollipop Tree. Stick suckers into a board with small holes cut in it. Color the tips of the sticks in different colors. Kids pick suckers and keep them, plus a prize depending on the color they pulled.
• Football toss. Kids take turns trying to throw a football through a tire.
• Cake walk.
• Creepy guessing game. Place bowls of food such as grapes (eyeballs), carrots (fingers), macaroni (brains), etc., behind a piece of cloth and let kids guess what they’re touching.

Stock up on Halloween favors and candy. Give prizes to kids for participating or just to the winners, depending on the age group. Kids will love winning prizes and their parents will love the fun their kids will have.

For mood music throughout the carnival, check out a CreepShow CD!