Celebrating Halloween is easy for the better part of your child’s first years. Dress them up all spooky, do a few Halloween-based activities with them, and the night is a success. But what about when your child gets old enough to want to invite friends round and host a party?
What then? You can’t simply go on ignoring the fact that the party needs planning and then wing it on the night of the party, your child’s rep is at stake and you want to make sure he or her shows their friends the best Halloween party they’ve ever known!
Whether your someone who has years of experience in hosting Halloween parties looking for new ideas, or a complete newcomer to the whole process, with these 3 funtastic ideas we’ll make sure your little mummies, superheroes and goblins have a blast this Halloween!
Not only that, but we’ll make the whole process so easy and simple that you’ll wonder why you were ever spooked by the idea of hosting a Halloween party (pun intended!)
Now Mr or Mrs Count Dracula, are you ready to learn some simple ideas you can put to use this Halloween, and host the best Halloween party the world has ever known (or at least your child’s friends have ever known)? Good, let’s get cracking:
Note: Were going to have a little fun this article, and instead of labelling them as ideas, we’ll call each of them spooks!
Spook Number 1: Halloween Party Decorations
Whether you decide to make a Halloween party simple or complex, you almost always need some decorations to set the mood for your guests.
Attending a Halloween party isn’t much fun without the “spooky” side of Halloween bearing down on your guests as they enter your chamber of horror.
Take it from someone who knows, unless your child is an adult who can drink and doesn’t have to worry about anything but making sure their friends have alcoholic beverages they can drink, decorations can make or break a Halloween party.
Decorations can be as simple as having a few pumpkins laying about the house to full-blown decorations like cobwebs, mummy statues, pumpkin heads that light up, sound effects and if you want to go the extra mile, gruesome gas made by Halloween smoke machines that spit out safe non-toxic white fog!
To make it easier for you to decide, i’ll divide both categories into a simple decorative party, and a complex decorative party, and then list things that you can use at your child’s party. (the only different between the two is that the more complex version looks to really set the mood and impress your guests, while the other basic version is more focused on setting a small mood but putting more emphasis on the types of games played at the party)
Simple Decorative Party:
1. Balloons with Halloween horrors
2. Plastic critters such as spiders and beetles
3. one (or two) real (or fake) light up pumpkins. One can be outside to greet guests, and the second can be next to the entrance filled with sweets that your friends can grab at the end of the party.
4. Halloween Pictures all around the house
5. Halloween Table cloth, or fabric
6. Perhaps a few Halloween figures sprinkled across the house
7. Spooky Music
More Elaborate Decorative Party:
1. Balloons with Halloween horrors
2. Plastic critters such as spiders and beetles
3. one (or two) real (or fake) light up pumpkins. One can be outside to greet guests, and the second can be next to the entrance filled with sweets that your friends can grab at the end of the party.
4. Halloween Pictures all around the house
5. Halloween Table cloth, or fabric
6. Perhaps a few Halloween figures sprinkled across the house
7. Statues (still or electronic driven). Things such as mummies, witches, goblins, ogres and so forth will do well. If you want to go the extra mile you can put one of each in every room of your house and decorate those rooms to the theme of the statues standing inside them.
8. Cobwebs, more pumpkins, and other props that go great for Halloween
9. Halloween Smoke Machine (they are non-toxic fog machines that are safe for children)
10. Spooky music
As you can see, the list could stretch endlessly! It’s up to you to decide how far you want to go with your decorations. Other ideas could be to put weird patterns that drape over the chairs to set a spooky forgotten atmosphere, and the list of ideas could go on!
Spook Number 2: Halloween Party Food & Drinks
Like with any successful party, you need food and drinks. Now you may be thinking, “well everyone knows that any party needs food & drinks”. But we’re going to take it one step further and spookify our food & drinks to make the kids feel like they are feasting upon gruesome critters and disgusting swamp water! (Don’t worry, we wont actually be making the foods out of things like dust and dirty water, but instead we’ll be using popular yummy mixes that’ll allow the kids to pretend they are!)
The following is a list of Halloween Recipes, and the ingredients that go into making these recipes!
Note: It helps to play along with the children when serving them up food and refreshments. Either by labelling the food with their Halloween names or saying it out loud yourself. Don’t worry if you feel silly! The children (and your children especially) will love you all the more
for it! Get stuck in and pretend as much as you want, it’s actually fun when you get into the swing of things.
Spooky Halloween Treats and Drinks:
Rats Baked In Blood:
Making something like casserole shaped as rats with carrots, black beans and onions shaped as ears, nose, whiskers and eyes will have your guests rushing to your table to dig into your ghoulish dish. Use ground beef to shape the body of the mouse, and use a tomato sauce of your
choice to represent the blood.
GraveStone Cookies:
Cut out some templates using cardboards then use them to make your cookies the shape you want!
Dracula’s Blood Pudding:
Before serving, using a rubber scraper, fold in whipped topping until almost blended. Spoon into 6 individual bowls.
Spoon some jam onto each pudding and stir slightly.
Dirty Cups:
Get some foil-lined clay cups, then crush up some chocolate sandwich cookies into little pieces. Add some milk into the cups, put the little pieces of chocolate in and add a topping like whipped cream and stick some gummy worms or insects on the top to make a true “Dirty Cup”.
Note: Make the whipped topping thick enough to hold the gummy worms up in place.
Swamp Juice:
Empty a 13-oz package of Kool-Aid into a punch bowl (or similar). Add 1 cup of sugar and 8 cups of water, then stir until dissolved. Stir in 1 can of frozen orange juice concentrate. Then just before service, add 4 cups of ginger ale and 3 scoops of orange sherbet to create a putrid green color that will look absolutely horrible but taste delicious!
Add extras like gummy worms or raisins as bugs for an extra “spooky” effect. This will be the best Swamp Juice your little monsters will ever drink!
Spook Number 3: Halloween Party Games and Activities
No child’s party is complete without a host of games and activities to entertain their friends with, and I’ve got a line-up of games ideal for your child’s Halloween party that will keep them ALL entertained for the better part of the night (or day on the off-chance that you decide
to host the party during the day):
Spooky Game 1:
Mummy Wrap:
Pair the kids up. One to wrap, and the other to be the mummy. If you have adult guests then you can use them to wrap as mummies. The first to wrap their partner wins a price. Watch your little monsters go crazy as they turn your guests into mummies!
Equipment needed:
A packet of toilet rolls
Spooky Game 2:
Feed the monster:
The aim of the game is to get the bean bags into the bucket. Each child can have 4-6 bean bags each. Every time they get a bean bag in the bucket they get a small prize such as a sweet. For those that do not get any bean bags in, give them a consolation prize for taking part.
I find that children often don’t mind not doing well on a game if they are rewarded for their attempt.
Equipment needed:
One to several buckets / 4+ bean bags
Everyone can either take it in turns to have their go, or you can buy more of each item to allow more than one person to have a go at a time.
Spooky Game 3:
Bobbing for apples (with a twist):
Instead of filling the bucket with water, fill it with milk and add some red colouring to make it look like blood. Then put the apples inside and have your gruesome little monsters pick out the apples with their mouth. Usually everyone wins a prize for doing this. Some kids find it
off putting and really get into the spirit of Halloween and as such believe that it’s blood. This means they may not want to do the game. An alternative for this problem is to have a separate bucket with just water so they too can take part in the game!
Equipment needed:
One to several buckets
Milk (or water)
Bag of Apples
Variation: Some children either don’t like putting their face in any sort of liquid, or simply do not want to ruin their Halloween make-up. Another alternative is to hang the apples by their stems up on the walls or from doors.
Spooky Game 4 :
Scavenger Hunt or Witch Hunt:
Have your little monsters go out on the hunt for hidden sweets or witch hats. IF you decide to go the sweet route then you do not have to worry about giving anyone a prize as the prize is finding the sweets. If you decide to do the Witch Hunt then you’ll have to come up with a prize for those that find the witch hats.
Equipment needed:
Sweets
Witch hats (small or big)
So there you have it, 3 spookylicious and fun ideas For Children’s Halloween Parties this year, guaranteed to send a chill up everyone’s spine!
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