It seems that we’re throwing a party for about 8-10 3-5 year old kids for Halloween. I have no idea what to do with them since they are so young. I’d like to get some ideas of things that we can do that may scare them a bit, but not make them poop themselves.
We have a basement so I think we’re going to try and make a small haunted house, though I don’t know what to put in there. I’ve also thought about making spaghetti, then when it’s nice and cold and slimy putting it into a bowl and let them feel it. We used to do this as kids and we were told it was brains, I don’t think the little ones will know what that even is.
Other then that I’ve got nothing. We’d like some good ideas for games and decorations and such.
Bobbing for apples is a traditional party game. Lets the kids splash a bit and get a healthy snack.
If you play pin the tail on anything, I strongly suggest you issue only one pin at a time, to the current player. Pass out pins to a group of kids and they will play pin each other (and/or you) in the ass.
Pumpkin Pinata might be fun–again only one stick and carefully supervised whacking until the treats spill out.
Break 'em up into small groups (two or three kids) and see which team can make the best mummy by wrapping one group member with toilet paper. Or better yet, put a grown-up in each group and make the grown-up be the mummy for the kids to wrap. For contests like this, you can get little candy-filled Halloween-themed trophies from Wal-Mart for like $1, as long as you’re there buying a case of cheap toilet paper.
Scaring them, eh? hm. Well, if you’re planning on a haunted house, you’ll need to keep the tone fairly low for your target audience. Strobe lights, flickery lights, spooky noises, and fake spiderwebs or netting that’ll brush against faces and legs are good. For that age bracket, just a stretch of darkness is usually plenty scary enough. If you want to scare 'em good, one relatively harmless way is to give 'em a blast of compressed air around ankle-height when they’re in a dark hallway and can’t see what’s happening. The noise and sudden contact is a pretty good jolt, but it might scare the littler ones too much, so use your judgment.
8-10 kids between 3 & 5? Did you lose a bet or something?
Some craft ideas from our last Halloween party: Get some halloween themed candies & sprinkles & the like, mix up some orange & black frosting, and let them decorate their own cupcakes. Go to a craft store, and get some large packs of halloween stickers & foam cutouts and the like, give out some glue sticks and construction paper, and let them create their own halloween scenes. No matter what, you’re going to have some trouble with the really young ones, so try to draft some of the other parents to stick around & help out.
Power tools and explosives! There will be blood and gore everywhere! ScaAaaaAAaaary!
On the other hand, as the daddy of a 3 year old, imagination play will rule the day. Seriously, if you think you are going to pull off any organized play with that many kids under 5, you belong in a haunted asylum. Go to the local party store and buy a bunch of cheap masks, glow sticks, and silly things. Sit back and try to keep the chaos to a manageable level. If there isn’t blood and lawsuits, you have succeeded.
I do the halloween party for my oldest son’s class every year, and at every age they’ve liked having a craft of some kind to take home and show off. Have a few supervised, structured “stations” set up–bob for apples, frost a cookie or cupcake, paint a pumpkin, etc.
In a separate area put on some scary sounds or songs, provide a good number of prop type toys like NurseCarmen suggested so they can run and tumble a bit. Then let them migrate to whatever looks best to them. Try and have fun!
Well luckily we’ve invited more then just the kids, so at least one parent will be with their children. Still it’s already at 19 people! I didn’t think everyone would show up, but they are planning on it. We do like the toilet paper mummy, and we’ll have to come up with some crafts.
Keep the ideas coming though, I’m sure we’ll need all we can get.
Bobbing for apples + colds and flu = not a good idea.
I’m with the Pin the Tail on the Black Cat group. Take the standard party games for that age and give them a Halloween theme. A simple craft is a great idea.
Encourage them to come in their costumes. That alone will make it Halloween-y.
I like the toilet paper mummy thing. I remember doing that at various parties as a kid and it is great fun. The winner, in the games I played, was the group who used up all of their toilet paper (one roll for every 2 kids) without having any touch the ground. You have to work together to do it. Fun!
I caution you about the scary stuff. If you do have anything scary, make sure you run it by the parents. I was a particularly sensitive little kid and would have been scared shitless by stuff like spaghetti brains and even paper spiders with a strobe light.
A costume parade. “Contest” might break their little devilish hearts. If you have a photo printer, you can take pictures of each kid, and the group, print them out, and let them paste the photos to black construction paper decorated with halloween stickers.
Yeah, I know. Awesome. I shoulda been a nursery school Event Planner.
just a cautionary note about scary stuff:
I once rented a gorilla costume for a costume party (not Halloween). I secretly put it on right before I walked into the house.
Results:
The 8 year old was delighted.
His 3 year old sister freaked out. Totally, absolutely freaked. She screamed uncontrollably. Not like normal crying or a temper tantrum-- it was the scream of desperation, of panic, of total terror. It took 15 minutes to calm down.Not fun.
And this was a “funny gorilla” costume during daytime. A scary costume in a dark room would have been worse.
When I was maybe ten or eleven, a friend and I decided that instead of trick-or-treating, we’d set up a haunted house. We did our best to make it scary, and part of that was having my friend jump out and “Grrrr!” while wearing a scary mask.
We decided to give it a test run using the little girls next door – ages 5 and 2, I think – as guinea pigs. The poor girls. They’re probably still in therapy to this day.
I think it’s a bad idea to purposely scare the shit out of really small children.
We don’t intend to scare any of the little ones. The “haunted house” is going to be Halloween decorations, nothing more. I did find some good decorations last night, a few non scary ghosts and such. I think the worst thing that will scare the little kids is the cat poop that we miss.
I’m hoping the kids will dress up, and I know my wife and I will, though don’t know about anyone else.
For the kids in question, maybe they could create their own “Haunted Something” in the garage or in the yard. At that age, they don’t have the experience to come up with something horrifying. It will be age appropriate.
Make sure there are no flames. Toilet paper goes up instantly. Somebody decides to spray Silly String and it bursts into flame. Costumes are flammable. Keep it a safe party, because you can’t supervise everyone contentiously.
For this age group you want to think in terms of Scooby Doo scary. Cartoons, very fake decorations, and startle/giggle scary. No gore, no gross, and certainly no realistic or moving monsters.
Put on a monster mask and chase them around a little. Set the furniture to make a good “figure eight” running space if you can. Then hand off the mask to one of the kids and let them chase each other for a while.
They also really love music and dancing. Lazy Town pirate song (I’m at work, but type that into YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.) type stuff. Long black and orange and green ribbons (2-3 feet) taped or stapled to any sort of soft handle (Warning: handle can become weapon) are great for waving about to music.
Dollar store castenets and maracas are great fun too.
Lots of cheap balls strewn around the floor (makes a good take-home toy) or balloons just blown up with air that they can throw around without hurting anything.
Sugar first, then lots of chasing, running, and dancing. When the sugar starts to wear off hand them back to their parents in time to make it home before the nap sets in. (i.e. don’t plan a four-hour party.)
If you have a dollar store which does balloons, that’s always a great take-home too.
I highly recommend Oriental_Trading_Company for cheap toys, decorations, and swag; but you’d need to order today.