Class Party Halloween Games
If you ask children what their favorite holiday is, the most likely response
from most children will be Christmas, with Halloween coming in a close second.
Some children will choose Halloween as their first favorite. But this holiday,
with all its goblins and ghouls, likely makes the top two favorite holidays on
most children's' lists.
To that end, then, it's always fun to have a raucous Halloween class party. With
lots of fun games and activities, and plenty of candy for prizes, it's sure to
be a hit with kids of all school ages.
For younger children how about a game of pumpkin bowling? Find some of those
inexpensive plastic pumpkin treat buckets and stack them up on a hard floor. You
can stack them as high as you like, but you have to start with at least three
buckets. If you get many buckets, you can make a pyramid out of them. Find some
lightweight plastic balls - plastic bowling balls are excellent for this. And
let the kids go bowling! The kids love knocking over the pumpkin heads and all
the kids who play should get a prize for this game.
Kids of all ages enjoy making mummies out of themselves and their friends.
Here's how this works. You bring in toilet paper, lots and lots of toilet paper.
Divide the kids into teams of 2. When you begin timing the kids, they must wrap
their friend up in the toilet paper, mummy style. The first team who is all
wrapped wins. The child who's wrapped up like a mummy can then break out of the
toilet paper wrap with a scary "roar" and the game begins again so the other
child can also be wrapped. Be sure to play some spooky Halloween music while
this game is being played to add to the atmosphere.
Circle time! Have all the kids get in a circle and begin a spooky story. The
story can begin with the classic, "It was a dark and spooky night..." and then
the person next in the circle continues the story. Each child adds something to
the story as it moves around the circle. If the children are young, you can keep
the story on the straight and narrow by indicating no gruesome elements will be
allowed. If the kids are older, you can decide how scary the story can be. Be
aware that children in higher elementary grades will not only like their stories
fairly scary and gruesome, but some might even add "booger" and "snot" and
"throw up" elements to their story. You can set the rules ahead of time to
prepare for this type of storytelling.
No game has held onto children's interests for more years than the classic
"musical chairs". This version includes playing Halloween music (think "Monster
Mash" or "Thriller" by Michael Jackson) and asking the kids to act as spooky and
scary as they can while they race around the chairs. You can up the rules
depending on the ages of the children. For example, for children in the lower
grades you can tell them to just walk around the chairs until the music stops.
As they get older, you can add challenging elements, such as make scary faces as
you walk around the chairs, do the monster mash (whatever that means to the
individual kid) and other things like that. You're sure to get some creative
responses.
Kids love cakewalks, but they aren't practical in the classroom. You could,
however, have a treat walk. Save enough space in the classroom for this one.
Again, play some Halloween-themed music and have the kids walk around in a
circle as they do for cakewalks during other school events. Instead of having
them walk onto number squares or circles, however, you can have them walking
onto cardboard discs that include pictures of ghosts, monsters and the like. The
person running the cakewalk will stop the music and pull a matching picture out
of a pumpkin head. Instead of calling "#14", for example, as the winner of the
cakewalk, it will be "ghost head" or "monster mouth".