I'm in my 2nd year of organizing our school's carnival. In addition to the usual games (cake walk, bean bag toss, putt putt, duck pond, etc.)
we also have created some new ones.
Aquarium drop-use a small fish tank, put a dessert dish in the bottom and fill it with water, the children get 3 pennies (chances) to try and drop in to the dish.
treasure hunt- we fill a cooler with sand and seashells and shovels, etc. Hide lots of pennies in the sand. Give each player 15 seconds. They win a prize that corresponds to the amount of pennies they find.
tattoo parlor- we do colored & glitter hair spray, face painting, and tattoos in one room. The kids pay a ticket for each thing.
We do a craft room where the kids make a beaded necklace or bracelet to take home.
White Elephant Room- we ask for donations of nice, clean toys, books, candles & nick nacks. We then set up a room and price everything .25 or .50. We made a lot of money off of it last year and the kids love to go shopping, it also attracted adults to come and buy things too.
At our first ever Halloween Carnival, our most populat game by FAR was "21", yes, Blackjack without the money. We hads kids lined up waiting to play. My dad was one of the dealers and he my best friend dealt the cards slowly and counted with the kids. Then the child received a token for every time they beat the house!
This past fall we decided to make our games instead of renting them. They included a duck pond, basketball throw, mini golf, bowling game, soda pop ring toss, tic tac toe, bean bag toss, sucker pull and washer board. We also do a cake walk, sand art and face painting/tatoos every year.
Take a toilet lid, mount it to a board and open the lid, kids have to throw a roll of toliet paper into the opening... or beanbags,, toilet paper just soundsd cooler..
We also used small cups standing upright, and you throw ping-pong balls into them.