Halloween Party - Valparaiso,IN

Hi L.,

In kindergarten, I think it works best to have children divide into groups that travel to different centers. Have about 4 stations that kids rotate to every 15 minutes. In kindergarten, I played Halloween bingo with approx. 5 kids at a time. I had little trinkets to give the when they won. I printed free customized Halloween cards from dltk.com. (A great site especially since you can customize charts.) Another mom had a station where the kids decorated foam photo frames with foam stickers. The class took a group photo right when the party started. A dad drove to Walgreens and got 20 copies made of the photo and returned back in an hour to stick the photos in the frames in time to take home that day! One mom was in charge of a game similar to Hot Potato but she used a pumpkin. At another station, kids decorated a Halloween cupcake. There are tons and tons of ideas on http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/
Have fun! Our PTO gives the room mom $2. per child for each party that our school has. (We have two parties per year.) Oh... we did get all the kids together to play one large group game. We did relay races in the hallway.

I found a really cute idea in Family Fun Magagzine. You take a plastic, jointed skeleton (for a whole class you'd probably need 3, so get different colors) and trace around them on a long piece of roll paper (laminate if you can for durability) and then color the tracings to match the colors of skeletons. Take the skeletons apart, the joints pop apart easily. To play the game, divide group into teams of ten or less-one for each color of skeleton, hide the bones around the room, when bones are found have the children place them on the paper skeleton for their team and whichever team/color assembles their skeleton first, wins. I have been playing this game with my kindergarten class for a couple of weeks now and they LOVE it. They usually want you to rehide the bones so you can do it over and over. By using plastic skeletons and laminating your paper ones, you will most likely be able to keep it to play again next year!

One of my favorite Halloween ideas is to bring toilet tissue rolls & wrap a few people up like mummies...the kids love it

Lesson learned a long time ago - be sure and bring a kitchen timer. So much easier to keep track of how much time is spent at each station.

Look through Oriental Trading for favors and game ideas.
www.orientaltrading.com

In at my son's kindergarten, we colored Halloween themed gift bags (which then was used to carry goodies around), decorated pumpkin sugar cookies, made Halloween themed necklaces (purchased through Oriental Trading), played a relay type game in the hall. We had a pseudo 5th station as a snack area.

Be sure to check with your teacher to make sure she doesn't already have guidelines in mind. My son's teacher this year did not want games that would rile up already hyped children.

Good luck!

when my daughter was little, we used many of the old favorites for her class party......pin the tail on the donkey (with a Halloween twist, I had to draw something back then, but now you can find pre-made games at places like DollarTree, Target, Party City).....Eating marshmellows off a string hung above the childrens chins with NO HANDS....Bozo buckets (using 6 plastic jack o lanterns and plastic golf balls painted to look like eyeballs) .....Check out FAMILY FUN;s web site....they always have interesting ideas for food, crafts and games kids will love.

I Like the mummy idea!!! I am also doing this...I thought of bingo and pin the nose on the pumpkin or hat on the scarecrow?

I do a halloween party every year. The games we play which have lasted from 1st grade to 6th grade are:
The mummy wrap, the tp idea
Bobbing for apples
Pin the wart on the witch, get a picture of a witch, have them chew bubble gum and it's like pin the tail on the donkey
Pass the scull, like hot potato to scary music, with a scull
If it's nice out we'll do a sack race and a 3 legged race. We also do 1-2 art projects from oriental trading. I make easy scary punch, serve pizza and some goofy cup cakes. We have done it for so long the party goes into the evening and the girls are older and the children look forward to the annual party! Its a hoot, have fun! Oh, play a movie in the background ie Casper or just let them have free-play around the house, they really love that the best!