Halloween Scary -6yr- Frankenstein's Lab

My son Jacob wanted a "scary" but not really scary, Halloween party since his birthday is so close to Halloween in October.  I made up invitations on some white paper with gray cloudy looking streaks on it with some drawings of spiders I drew hanging from spider web strings on the sides of the pages.   "Serpents and spiders, tail of a rat, Jacob's dwelling is where the fun's at.  Pull out your costumes from last Halloween,  All you Goblins and ghoulies and let out a scream!  Halloween costumes are really a must,  Leave on the cobwebs, the mildew and dust.  Hop on your broomsticks and come after dark  for 7 pm is when the fun starts.  Rap on a table, it's time to respond,  send us a message from somewhere beyond.  RIP or RSVP: 555-5555 Come if you dare….  Jacob is turning into a toad , I mean a 6 year old.  Join us for Cake, I Scream, Fun and Games.  Jacob's Haunted House at our address.  Saturday, October 15th at 7 o'clock in the Evening.  The outside of the invitation had a skull on it and read "Come if you dare…"  I set the time so that the party was at night right as it turned dark. 

I made 30 ghosts using white balloons, white garbage bags, some black vinyl tablecloth, spray glue and fishing line.  I blew up the balloons, cut a hole in the corner of the garbage bag, stuck the tied end of  the balloon through the hole, tied some fishing line to the end, tied a tack to the end of the fishing line, spray glued the eyes and mouths on that I cut out of the table cloth material. I hung the ghosts up throughout the house.  I bought some white votive candles and jars.  I lit them all over the house and turned out the lights before the guests arrived.  I dressed up as a witch.  The kids all came dressed in their Halloween costumes and several of the adults did too, which surprised me! 

When they arrived, I gave them the dollar store flashlights and we escorted them to the playroom upstairs which was the only lit room.  I had a halloween CD that had Ghostbusters on it so we cranked  that up while I took the kids for a tour around the house to go "Ghost Busting". It really set the mood.  The kids were really excited.  I  had set up a few ghosts with special effects - taped one to the ceiling fan  - I tested this beforehand so it wouldn't tangle in the fan and had  it flying around in circles.  I had another move up and down as I opened a door.  I let them go around and count ghosts with me.  They liked it.  We had 30 kids so I took 15 at a time.  When we finished with the tour, I led them to our garage.  The garage was set up like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory.  We had hung black vinyl table cloth that I had purchased by the roll from the ceiling to the floor all around the garage. 

Our neighbor has a blow up monster that they use for Halloween.  I put a trench coat on it, some boots on the feet and a Frankenstein mask over the face.  My husband has a little wooden workbench that is in the corner nook of our garage.  I threw some white sheets over it and put Frankenstein on it.  We plugged in a strobe light and I turned on a flashlight that had an electrical sound effect that sounded like someone threw the switch of electricity in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory.  I also made some curtains out of the tablecloth  to make the room a little more separated.    We had a wall with the tools on it in the garage.  I left out the scary looking tools like clippers and hung some chains we had lying around up on the wall.  We also had a skeleton that moved around hanging on one of the walls from some bike hooks with chains hanging so he looked like he was in a dungeon.  I had spooky candelabras, skulls, skeletons, giant furry spiders, lit up pumpkins all around.  I boiled a cauliflower and rubbed a little red dye on it and put it some water floating in a glass jar to look like a brain.   I bought some wall hanging vinyl with cemetary scenes on it that I attached around the room.  I taped some white trash bags to the inside of some cardboard boxes. 

Then, I wrapped them up with the black vinyl tablecloth material and cut out a hole in the front for kids to put their hands in and feel what was inside the box.  I put spaghetti in one and called it guts, grapes in one and those were eyeballs, cauliflour was a brain, mini-carrots were fingers.  I made one box that opened on both ends.  I had a skeleton glove that was black with raised plastic bony fingers.    I reached my arm all the way through and tapped my fingers on the box.  I talked around surprising the kids and adults. 

We did a mummy wrap game where I broke them into 3 groups of 10 people and had them pass a roll of toilet paper around the circle wrapping up the person in the middle.  They had to use up both rolls.  The kids got to go over and look at Frankenstein.  I made a couple of cakes, one with green streaky icing and big black spiders made out of icing.  The other was just chocolate with white ghosts all over it.  We sang "Happy Birthday" and my son, Jacob blew out the candles.  We passed out cake and ice cream as he opened his presents.  The kids hung out in the garage.  The grown ups sat around at card tables outside the garage by candle light and talked and watched.  We had that Halloween CD blasting.  It had a lot of fun songs on it.  I passed out Goody bags that I made out of white trash bags, googly eyes.  I took a circle shape, wrapped up some candy forming a ball, tied a twist tie around the neck, affixed 2 googly eyes to resemble a ghost.  For weeks after the party, any time I saw one of the kids who attended the party, they would tell me the part that they liked best and how much they loved his party.