Halloween School Party Games

For this school year, I've been asked to help plan the holiday parties for my daughter's class.  Being a homeroom mom is a hoot -- mostly because the kiddos are so adorable and watching them interact and play together is too fun. 

Plus, while my child still wants to be seen with her parents?  I'm going to soak that in for all it is worth. 

Early on, a friend warned me that the teenage years will hit all too fast, and that I'd better store up some cheery little memories before the hormone soup clock strikes 13.  I've taken that advice to heart as much as I could, and have enjoyed all of our little fun times together as The Peanut has grown steadily upward.  I think I may secretly harbor the hope that we'll be one of the lucky few families with a teenager that still enjoys hanging out with her parents...a girl can dream, right?

In any case, I've spent some time this week coming up with game ideas for the Halloween party based on party games I remember playing in the past, ones that friends or family have suggested, and things I've found around the internet. 

But, honestly?  The game ideas that actually sound fun are a little scanty out there for Halloween.  

So I've compiled a few of the ones that sounded best to me to share with everyone else who may be having that same scramble to find school party ideas in the hopes that other folks might find them helpful, too. 


These would work equally well for a Halloween party at home or for a church group (assuming your church group isn't one of those which thinks that anyone who trick or treats is really amassing candy for Satan, in which case you might want to just skip this post entirely -- and my apologies for making your eyes sin with the little ghost illustration up top, if so) or any group where kids -- or adults who want to be kids again -- might be gathered.  I've tried to give a little description or some directions for each that make sense to me, but if they are not clear for you, please ask and I'll do my best to flesh them out a bit more for you. 

This is a work in progress, and I'll try to expand this for major holidays going forward.  So, if you have some great ideas?  Please do share them with the rest of us!

1)  Pass The Baby Ghost Relay:  This is an idea from a friend of mine.  You take two large tubs/bowls and fill them with cotton balls, and place equally large bowls on the other side of the room.  Line the kids up in two straight lines between the bowls, and give the first child in line by the tub of cotton balls a ladle.  The object?  To pass a ladle full of "baby ghosts" (cotton balls) all the way down the line, from child to child, until it is dumped into the empty bowl at the other end.  The child at the end of the line runs up to become the first child by the cotton balls, and you keep going like this until one line has transferred all its "baby ghosts" to the tub on the other end.  First line to finish wins.

2)  Guess The Candy Corn/Jelly Beans/Whatever:  Big jar, filled with candy pieces, guess how many their are, yadda yadda yadda.  Pretty much an old stand-by, but easy to set up and do, which has huge benefits if you are under a deadline.

3)  BINGO:  There are any number of sites around the internet that have printable BINGO cards for various holidays, along with call cards for the person running the game.  The basic idea is that you have pictures that go with the particular holiday, then you call them out for the kids to match up and get a BINGO.

4)  Pumpkin Bowling:  I thought this was a cute idea from a party game website.  You take some empty 2-liter or smaller soda pop bottles, line them up as bowling pins -- or take the pins from a bowling game -- and use small pumpkins as the balls.  Because the pumpkins are in a funky shape, they wobble around everywhere instead of going straight ahead, which makes for a lot of laughing.

5)  Trick Or Treat:  This would be a good one for little kids -- we did something like this for my daughter's kindergarten class way back when.  You take a big bowl/cauldron and make several cards to be picked out by each child.  Some say trick, some say treat -- if you pull out a "treat" card, you get a bag of goodies.  If you pulled out a trick card?  You still got a sucker or something small, jus not the bigger bag o' goodies.

6)  "Trick Or Treat" Word Game:  Write the words "Trick Or Treat" at the top of a sheet of paper.  Set a timer and see how many words the kids can make out of them.  Kids with the most words win a prize.  Can do this with "Halloween" or "All Hallows Eve" or any other spooky phrase with enough letters to make it interesting.  (Found this germ of an idea at Kaboose.)

7)  Scary Story Round Robin:  The host begins a scary tale with a bit of set-up.  Then each child takes a turn coming up with the next sentence to tell the story.  For little kids, this can involve a lot of silly sentences and giggling, but older kids can come up with really good and elaborate sentences.

8)  Pin The Tail On...:  Pin the tail on the black cat, pin the wart on the witch, pin the teeth on Dracula, pin the spider on the web...the possibilities are endless, aren't they?  You just need some double-stick tape and a decent drawing hand (or know someone who has one).

9)  Eyeball Hunt:  Like an Easter egg hunt, only you use plastic eyeballs (or ping pong balls painted to look like eyeballs) or some other Halloween-related spooky thing.

10)  Hot Pumpkin:  Like a game of hot potato -- you sit the kids in a circle, and pass a small pumpkin from one to the next while the music plays.  When you turn off the music, the child holding the pumpkin is out.  Keep going until you only have one child left to find your winner.  Or you can use a stuffed toy -- like a ghost or black cat -- as the passing around object to avoid pumpkin splatter.

11)  Halloween Freeze Dance:  Similar to hot potato, have the kids get up and dance to music.  When the music stops, they have to freeze -- anyone who moves is out.  Last one wins.

12)  Boo Am I?:  A game of charades, with a Halloween theme to what the kids have to act out for each other.  From Disney's Family Fun.

13)  Ghost Libs:  I got this idea from Disney's Family Fun and played around with it a bit.   You do it like a giant Mad Lib, and have the kids come up with the words to fill in the "adjective," "noun," "verb," etc. blanks.   The Disney version had the kids using instruments and other noisemakers when cued by a certain word or phrase, but I thought that might be a little too noisy for a class party at school.  But if you do it like Mad Libs, where the kids come up with the various words to fill in the blanks, then you can read it aloud at the end.