Halloween Challenge (6-10yr) Spooky Games

I recently hosted a sleepover Halloween party for 7 children ages ranging from 6-10. My children asked me if they could play a bunch of games.  This party took a bit of time to prepare for but in the end it was worth the work.  It also included my children in the preparations so they got super excited anticipating the big day.  This party I call the Halloween Challenge. We spent most of the next day playing the different challenges. I call each game a station as they were all set up and ready to go before the children arrived.

DECORATIONS: We have a lot of decorations accumulated over the years and we decorated using some of those. At the dollar store I bought halloween tablecloths, napkins, plates and forks. My children created pictures to hang up around the house too. They made signs saying caution and do not enter for the doors. However, the setup for the party really doubles for the decorations too and not a lot is needed.  For each station you will need orange and black balloons. Buy one balloon per child per station that you intend to have. Buy some string to tie the balloons together in a balloon bouquet. I taped the bouquet to the  walls in front of each station. I found black and white Halloween clip art and printed out a cardstock image for each challenge. My kids colored them all and we taped them to the wall in front of each challenge. Each challenge had a name like puzfrozen stew, boo bracelet, feed the monster, etc. I used the same clip-art and created coloring books for each kid too.  For the challenges I decided to have two children on every team and 3 on the other. Because I had an odd number of children I decided to have them be on a different team every time. This turned out to be a good idea as it kept the challenges fair and unpredictable. So, I filled my 7 balloons with pieces of paper that said team 1, team 2, or team 3. The kids would each pop a balloon at the beginning of each challenge to determine which team they were on. I purchased the items needed for the challenges I created.  I printed out game instructions/rules to read at each station. I printed out a score sheet for each child. 

FOOD:  For lunch I made cheese sandwiches and used cookie cutters to cut out Halloween shaped images in the cheese sandwiches. We had our gross food items to snack on too. (see challenge name ewww)  For dinner: We had hot dog worms. I precut the hot dogs into thin slices before the party. I boiled them in water and served on hot dog buns. We had potato puffs too dipped in catchup and called them thumbs.  

THE PARTY: The party started later the night before Halloween. I waited until the last minute and found pumpkins half off at the local Walmart. So, I had the children clean their pumpkins and draw the face they wanted carved. They watched a movie while I carved the pumpkins and they all went to bed.  The next morning, after breakfast we went to the party area. We listened to Halloween music while the kids decorated t-shirts, put on glow tattoos and gems. Before the party, I purchased a couple sheets of glow-in-the dark iron on transfer paper and put a black and white Halloween image on each shirt. I told the children to decorate their shirts however they wanted using fabric markers. They all wore the shirts when they were done. If someone finished their shirt before the others I had them color in the coloring books.   I put the name of each challenge we had in a box. Each child took turns drawing a piece of paper out of the box to determine which challenge would be next. We popped the team balloons before each challenge to determine teams. After each challenge we went back to the main table to write down our scores. 

GAMES:   1)BLOCKHEAD MONSTER: Where I work I was able to get hundreds of 1 x 1 square thin pieces of wood. Using permanent markers I put letters of the alphabet on each side of the wood. I used a different color for each team and made sure each team had the same number of blocks. The object of this game was to find the letters and spell out the word Happy Halloween first. 1st place 15 points, 2nd place 10 pts., 3rd place 7 points.

2)IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN: To prepare: I boiled noodles and put them into three separate bowls with oil to keep them from sticking and to keep them ewwy. I covered with tin foil with a hole for a hand to reach in. I printed out math problems, a sheet for them to write answers on, and one solution sheet for me. I laminated the math problems using contact paper and put them in the noodles. The game: Each child had to reach into the brain and pull out a problem. Have a towel next to the bowl to wipe hands. They could take as much time as needed to solve all the math problems. I awarded 1 point for each correct answer.

3) FIND THE WITCH: I took pictures from the internet of kids in Halloween costumes and cut and paste them into a picture to create an I-spy type picture. I put one witch in the picture scene. I spy image that ended up being about 25 long when taped together. I laminated although not necessary. I created three pictures to hang on the wall 1 for each team. I also created clues to give the children and deducted one point for every clue the team requested. I anticipated this to be hard and it wasn't. 1st place 15 points, 2nd place 10 pts., 3rd place 7 points.

4) MUMMA AND POPPA:  Using the clip art from the stations and coloring books I printed out a bunch of the images. I took about 10 balloons per team and filled them with the images. I wrote team 1, team 2, and team 3 on the balloons. Each teams balloons had one image of a mummy in them. The kids took turns popping 1 balloon. The first team to pop the mummy picture won. 1st place 15 points, 2nd place 10 pts., 3rd place 7 points.

5 )CRACK THE BONES: Same concept and it was fun listening to the kids ask why were easter eggs hiding around the party area. I filled the eggs with clip art images and one egg per team had a skeleton image. I numbered the eggs team 1, team 2, and team 3. I hid the about 10 sets of 3 eggs around the party area. Each child took turns finding a set of eggs. On the count of three, they opened the eggs and opened their picture. The first to find the skeleton wins. 1st place 15 points, 2nd place 10 pts., 3rd place 7 points.

6) SILLY TIME: Silly bands are like gold in my house right now. I found some Halloween silly bands and put equal numbers of them into a cup. Having three teams, I had three cups. Each cup had about 8 silly bands that were the same. So, a cup had 7 pumpkins, 7 witch hats, 7 ghosts etc. I pulled out 1 band from the set before the party. The challenge was to sort all the bands and find which one had the missing band. The kids got to keep the silly bands when done. 1st place 15 points, 2nd place 10 pts., 3rd place 7 points.

7) CROWS NEST:  I printed out crows and cut them out. I then punched a hole and strung them with black curling ribbon about 18 from the floor.  I taped them to the wall where there was a hard Floor surface below them. I created three cups of legos that were identical pieces. I filled the cup with black strings and called it the crows nest. The game challenge was to build a tower to the crows. The tower had to stand on its own without falling or leaning. Then they had to dismantle the tower and put back into the crows nest. 1st place 15 points 2nd place 10 pts. 3rd place 7 points.

8) SKELETON PUZZLE: I found a skeleton puzzle game at Oriental trading. It had two puzzles so I had to create two teams instead of one. The first team to put the cardboard puzzle together won. 1st place 15 points 2nd place 10 pts.

9) BEAR HUNT: I found these cute little Halloween bears on discount. I took a picture of each one there were 8 different kinds. I  printed out a picture of each bear for each team. I hid the bears around the party area. On the back of each bear picture was a number. Each team had to find that number of bears around the party area. I actually put zero on one of them which was kind of fun. I awarded 1 point for every correct bear found.

10) SCARY SCULPTURE: Using the black and white clip art I printed out a witch a monster and a pumpkin on a piece of paper. I had two cups of playdough for each team. The dollar store sells 3 packs for $1. The challenge was to use their dough and create a sculpture of the image they had printed out. I judged the sculptures for closest wins and awarded 1st -3rd place points.

11) SPIDER WORDS: Using little plastic bugs I created three sets of equal amounts of bugs. The challenge was to spell the word spider using the bugs. First to spell it wins. 1st place 15 points 2nd place 10 pts. 3rd place 7 points.

12) BOO BRACELET:  I purchased a small bag of orange and black beads and letter beads B and O. Using a pipe cleaner I created a cute bracelet writing the word boo in the middle. I created a kit for each child with the same number of beads and a pipe cleaner in a bag. The challenge was for each child to make a bracelet that was identical to mine. Each identical bracelet was worth 10 points and I deducted one point for each mistake. The most common mistake was that boo was backwards. 

13) WITCHY CRAFT: I bought two poster boards at the dollar store. I cut them in half. I drew a picture of a witch. On an index card I wrote down every thing I drew. Black circle orange hat brown arms yellow sun etc. I made three sets of index cards. Using orange napkins I wrapped the cards and a package of markers for each team. I hung the 3 remaining boards on the window with my picture above them. The challenge was to unwrap the package and draw identical pictures to mine using the cards. They had to take turns drawing what was on the index card. This was a great game the kids liked it a lot. I judged them by choosing which team looked most like mine awarding 1 point to each team for most like mine. I let the children vote on the close calls and I also made sure each team won points.

14) FEED THE MONSTER:  I have a room in the party area that has no windows. This year I made it the glow in the dark room. I used a strobe light for the first time we went in for effect! Using a piece wood and some men who knew how to cut it we created a Frankenstein stand up with a big mouth (open hole). I painted him green and put glow in the dark paint on him. I purchased some other glow items to decorate the room and a put a big spider on the ceiling. I bought glow in the dark superballs glow in the dark aliens that you slingshot and glow in the dark sticky eyeballs. In the dark each team had to make their glow items through the monsters mouth. This was challenging with all the kids in the dark to be a contest but a ton of fun just do "do". So we did it just for fun in the dark and points were just awarded equally.

15) MAD SCIENTIST: I bought each child a set of sunglasses that have led lights that blink. They loved these and wore them trick-or-treating in the dark too. We put on our scientist glasses and went into the glow room. I had purchased a box of glow in the dark skeleton bones for each child. The object was to lay out the skeleton in the dark. 5 points for accomplishing it. Again the challenge of working in the dark was too hard I ended up turning the lights on to complete. 

16) FROZEN STEW: By a landslide this was the most popular game. For weeks before the party I had the children create skeleton ice cubes. We filled up about 4 gallon ziplock bags of them. I found the mold at the dollar store. We used food coloring to give some of them color. I also used plastic gloves and made a couple ice cube hands  ahead of time.  I filled up a huge tub of water and added the ice cubes. (note I added them before the party and they all melted too soon so add ice cubes when kids are actually sitting there for more fun) At the bottom of the tub I had these discount porcupine balls I found.  The object was to pull out 10 porcupine balls first. Have lots of towels ready so each child can warm up feet and toes and dry off. I was worried this would be a big mess but it all went smoothly. I had the chairs in a tight circle around the tub.

17) EWWWWW!: If you have squeemy kids have a backup plan! I made sure each child knew it was real food that we eat all the time to help them not be sick and to have fun with it. I let my kids help create the foods so they would be more inclined to try it. I created a platter of foods with each food item labeled for all to see. I awarded 5 points for trying each food item.  We purposely did this one close to lunch. All the kids except one really had fun with this.   A.Fly Jello  I used green jello and added raisins to it. I let my kids put the raisins in the mold. B.Snot sou-- Baby food green beans or green peas. I put in a bowl with a spoon for serving. C.Frogs heart  I sliced a can of cranberry and then cut them into heart shapes.  E.Puke on a cracerk right before serving -- I spread liverwurst on a ritz cracker.   G.Spider cupcakes: I found some spider molds and made cupcakes for each child for desert. I used red-hots for the spider eyes and green sprinkles for the spider body. We made the spiders gray frosting by mixing food colorings together. 

We dressed in our costumes and danced a little bit in the glow in the dark room while I prepared dinner. Then the kids ran around outside for a little bit before we headed out trick or treating.  We tallied up the scores and it was pretty close! The challenges and activities filled about 6 hours of time. My kids are still playing some of the games weeks after the partys. "