Here's what I came up with last year for our Harvest Party, which is a cross between a Halloween party and a fall festival...
- Spook House - As someone else mentioned this toned down haunted house was such a huge hit with the kids. Not sure the age group of your school, but mine is a K - 4th, so we didn't want to go scary.
We had three rooms. The first was the entrance which started with one of those big air blown things that looks like scary trees, with owls, ravens, sound effects, etc. We lined the path with hay bales, pumpkins, gourds and scarecrows. This year we may try to add weight activated air blow things. You know, the kids walk forward and trigger the air to blow... The next room was the mad scientist lab. We used a lot of black lights and neon. The PTO member who dressed up as the mad scientist had his hair slicked with glow in the dark gell. We had a static orb that the kids could touch and they could help him with some experiements and look through a microscope at a dead spider, etc. The last room was the old hag den (witches room). They were cooking up a brew and the kids could hand them the ingredients they asked for from labeled bowls that had a top that they couldn't see in to. We used dried corn for zombie teeth, had rubber snakes and insects, stuff like that.
The line for the spook house was non-stop, and we ran it right by the bake sale, which worked out great.
- Bean Bag Toss - I purchased a piece of 3/4" plywood and used a jig saw to cut out a huge pumpkin. I then painted it to look the part and cut out the eyes, nose and mouth.
- Gourd Bowling - We purchased some of those plastic bowling pins and used gourds as the bowling ball. Very funny!!!
- Pumpkin ring Toss - Bought some wooden rings at the local fabric store. Received donations of pumpkins from the locak nurseries. Used the ones with the largest stems as the targets. Set up like ten different pumpkins side by side so the kids could try to ring the stem
For these three games we gave each kid one raffle ticket for each game. When they played the game they put the ticket into the raffle. depending on how they did at the game they got extra tickets. For example, with the ring toss they had three chances. If they missed all three they got to put the one ticket in. Ringed one stem gave them another, ringed a second and they got three. And ringing all three got them 5 tickets.
Throughout the evening we had raffles of spirit items, prizes and best yet, Webkins. These things were so huge last year, and even better they just came out with the Husky, which is what our new mascot is!!!
Oh, a game that we played, that you could try, is the "Make a Mummy" contest. Get a couple of boxes of toilet paper. Have a child come up with an adult. When the music starts (or you say "Go!') the child has to wrap the adult in toilet paper. First one with an empty roll wins. This is also very entertaining to watch. We gave the winner a Webkin. Also, we had a bag of plastic rings (spiders, etc.). Any child that helped clean up the TP could grab a couple of rings.
Hope this helps.
PresidentJim
