Hallowe'en party games for kids

The pumpkin’s carved and glaring evilly at you, the bat-shaped biscuits are in the oven and the children have their best ‘trick or treat’ faces down pat.

Now all you need are a few suitably spooky games to help the kids’ Hallowe’en party go with a bang. Here is our guide to 10 of the best:

1. Apple Bobbing

The most famous Hallowe’en game of all. Bob the Bramleys in a large tub of water and each child takes it in turns to remove an apple using only their teeth.

Don’t forget to lay down a plastic sheet to protect the carpet – and have some towels on hand to dry the kids off!

Alternative yummier (and stickier) variations on apple bobbing include a series of treacle-coated scones/chocolate-coated marshmallows/jammy doughnuts hung by strings from the ceiling or another string – which must be eaten while suspended, without using hands.

2. The Name Game

A good guessing game to kick off proceedings.

Get some blank cards, a marker pen and some safety pins. Print the name of a famous person or character associated with Hallowe’en on to each card (eg Count Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster) When the children arrive, pin a card on each of their backs without telling them who they ‘are’. The object of the game is for them to guess their character. The rules are:

• They can only ask one question of each person
• Only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers can be given

3. Pumpkin Golf

Carve a pumpkin with an extra large mouth. Now build a makeshift cardboard ramp about one to two feet wide from the ground to the bottom of the pumpkin’s mouth, propped up with a cushion and taped to the floor for stability.

Mark a starting point a few feet clear from the start of the ramp. The older the children, the further away the starting point.

Each player hits a golf ball three times – and each time the ball goes into the pumpkin’s mouth, the player wins a sweetie.

4. Pumpkin Bowling

Pick several small pumpkins about five or six inches in diameter, with some spares in case any get squished.

Place plastic bowling pins or litre bottles on the ground several feet away. Each child gets two tries to knock down the pins with a pumpkin – knocking one over is worth a sweet; knocking the lot over is worth three.

5. Spooky stories

You can’t let Hallowe’en go by without a ghostly tale to chill the children. Sit them in a circle in a darkened room, with a lit torch in the middle. One player starts with the words ‘Once there was…’ and thinks of a couple of sentences to follow. The person to their right continues the tale with another couple of lines... and so on.

Make the stories as scary or gory as possible! Good starting points might be ‘Once there was a black cat creeping through a graveyard’, or ‘Once there was a bump in the night...’

6. Guess the Ghost

Plonk the kids in a big circle and put on some Hallowe’en-themed music (eg Thriller/Monster Mash).

The children take it in turns to be blindfolded and to walk around the circle, touching the other children’s heads. When the music stops, the child whose head is being touched must let out a ghostly wail. The blindfolded child has to guess who it is. If they guess correctly, they swap around. If not, they go round the circle again...

7. Ghoulish Guess What?

You need a large tray, some paper or plastic bowls and a selection of tactile foods (eg jelly, marshmallows, raspberries). Place the food in separate bowls or plates on the tray and cover the tray with a cloth.

Bring the tray out and tell the kids that it contains body parts from various ghouls. Blindfold the first player and bring out one bowl or plate, telling them that the food is, for instance, a ‘pair of squidgy monster’s eyes’ (two raspberries) or ‘the inside of a witch’s tummy’ (jelly).

By touching and smelling the items while blindfolded the participants have to guess what each different food actually is. The bravest can even try a mouthful! Don’t forget plastic sheeting for the floor – things could get messy with this one...

8. Brain digging

Cook a big pan of spaghetti, leave it to cool and pile it into a bowl. Hide ping pong balls inside the dish, variously emblazoned with the words ‘trick’ or ‘treat’. Each child takes it in turns to dig inside the ‘brains’ and pull out a ball. A ‘trick’ means a forfeit – such as ‘do an impression’, or ‘run around the room twice’; a ‘treat’ means a small prize.

9. Dress the Mummy

Bulk buy the toilet paper for this one. Split the guests into groups no smaller than two and give them each a big supply of loo paper. The object of the game is to turn one of the group into a mummy by wrapping them in the paper. Prizes go to the quickest and/or the best...

10. The Witches’ Cauldron Game

Fill a large cooking pot with a range of bits and bobs, from a damp sponge to a hard-boiled egg, a rubber frog and a pair of joke teeth, and blindfold each child in turn.

The children plunge their hand in turn into the cauldron to find the imaginary item you name – for example, the damp sponge might be a ‘giant’s tongue’, or the egg a ‘dragon’s eye’.

This article was published on Fri 28 October 2011