Halloween Party Planner

Getting spooked by all the details involved in planning a kids’ Halloween party? Relax. Halloween parties don’t have to be elaborate to be fun. Here are some quick tips on planning a bash that is guaranteed to impress all the ghouls and goblins in your neighbourhood.

Set the stage for spooky fun

Set the stage for party fun by creating a suitably spooky mood. Decorate your walls with stick-on spider webs (available at most craft supply stores) as well as homemade spiders, tombstones, ghosts, and pumpkins cut out of construction paper or bristol board. And don’t forget the music. There’s nothing like the sound of creaking doors and demented laughter to set the stage for spooky fun!

Scare up some hauntingly good eats. You can either add a Halloween twist to some of your kids’ favourite recipes—e.g., decorating cupcakes with orange icing and black licorice to make pumpkin faces—or you can whip up some treats that only get served at Halloween time—like candy apples. If you want to try something a little more out of the ordinary, check out some of the Halloween recipe web sites listed below.

Don’t drive yourself costume crazy. There’s no need to park yourself behind the sewing machine for weeks at a time, working on some super-complicated Halloween costume, nor is there any need to spend a small fortune on a store-bought costume—not when there are so many quick, easy, and inexpensive ways to come up with a costume that your kids will love. If your kids are getting tired of the emergency standby costume (the white sheet that gets transformed into a ghost!), you can pick up plenty of other Halloween costume tips by visiting some of the web sites listed below.

Games and activities

Whether you decide to go for a blast from the past by dredging up Halloween party games from your own youth or to come up with some fresh ideas of your own, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of games and activities up your sleeve. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Create a haunted house. Remember how thrilling—and chilling—it was to be led blindfolded through a friend’s homemade haunted house, listening to super-scary music as your friend shoved your hand in a bowl of ice-cold spaghetti and told you it was someone’s guts! While haunted houses aren’t a good idea for younger children, they can be great fun for kids age eight and up. (Younger children have too much trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy and may end up being genuinely terrorized!)

Play “stick the nose on the pumpkin.” While haunted houses may not be up their alley, younger kids will enjoy this variation on “pin the tail on the donkey.” Simply make a pumpkin face and a series of pumpkin noses out of construction paper and let the blindfolded party guests try their luck at sticking the nose on the right part of the pumpkin’s face. (Note: Use masking tape rather than pins to avoid having one kid stick a pin in another kid!)

Try a game of pumpkin bowling. Put a small amount of water in the bottom of some empty pop bottles and then screw the lids on the pop bottles on tightly. Your kids will have fun trying to knock the “pins” over by “bowling” with pumpkins! (Note: This is one of those games that is best played outside or on a washable floor, just in case one of the pumpkins turns to mush. It’s definitely not something you want to be trying on your carpets, stain-proof or not!)