Halloween will be here before we know it, which means that the season for Halloween parties is upon us! The idea of planning a party can be stressful - many parents find themselves bogged down with thoughts of costumes, candy, and decorations, and adding a party to the mix can be a lot to handle.
But, at Pogo Bounce House, we want to make the Halloween party season fun! After getting some ideas from this article, we hope you won’t feel overwhelmed with the concept of a kids’ Halloween party anymore. After all, you’ll be making great memories that your kids will always remember.
Since you’re planning a party for kids, you should probably ditch the copious amounts of fake blood and severed limbs and instead go for something on the silly side of scary. Whether you’re planning the party as an alternative to trick-or-treating or to get your neighborhood pumped for the season, we have what you need.
Spooky Tips for a Halloween Party
For your party, you need more than a punch bowl with a few plastic spiders floating in it. Keep reading to find out how to throw a Halloween party that your block (and your kids) won’t soon forget.
Pick a Theme
We find that kids’ parties are always better with a theme. For Halloween, put your thinking caps on and brainstorm ideas that are both fun and scary, then try to incorporate your idea throughout the entire party. How big you go is up to you!
For your theme, you may choose to go general (like witches and warlocks) or specific, like characters from a certain movie. Here are a few other ideas to get your mind working:
- Hocus Pocus
- Vampires and Werewolves
- Spooky Movie Characters
- Coraline
- Hotel Transylvania
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Think of what our own kids love and go from there. You’ll undoubtedly land on something that will make the night come to life.
Create Halloween Invitations
Invitations are where you can let your creativity shine through. After you think of a theme, incorporate it into the invitations to make them ultra-festive. Get your kids to help decorate them with stickers and stamps - or design your own invitations online!
Make sure to put across the fact that your Halloween party isn’t actually going to be scary. Other parents will be comforted to know that before they attend.
Put Up Decorations
What’s a Halloween party without decorations? To amaze guests of all ages, create a jack-o-lantern with dry ice fog as the centerpiece of your table, or place it on your front porch to act as the greeter. String webs around your house and place plastic spiders in them, and bring yard decorations inside to complete the vibe.
Keep your younger guests in mind and avoid decorating with anything that they might find intimidating or downright frightening. This should be a fun experience for everyone!
Make the Menu
It can be fun to amp up the gross-out factor when it comes to food at your Halloween party, but don’t overdo it. We promise, a little goes a long way. Festive, non-creepy foods include pumpkin flavored anything, chili for the cooler season, and candy corn.
The drinks are just as important as the food! You can make monster green Halloween punch with ginger ale, lime sherbet, and a few drops of green food coloring.
Don’t Forget the Costumes
Just like decorations, a Halloween party isn’t a Halloween party without the costumes! Your kids have probably been planning their costumes for weeks, so this should be no problem. If you have kids that are a little older, it’s wise to remind them not to dress too scary. It can also help to add ‘kid-friendly costumes only’ to your party invitations.
Turn up the Tunes
Spooky music can do wonders for the atmosphere of your Halloween party. Create a mix of fun Halloween songs for kids along with ambient Halloween sounds from Spotify or YouTube. There are tons of sound effects and songs that can be downloaded for free, and if you can’t find music that you’re crazy about, there’s always the option of turning on a kid-friendly Halloween movie in the background.
Game Time
Games are a great way to make sure your party guests are having fun, and there are many options to choose from. You can set up homemade carnival games, like ghost bowling (a game that involves bowling pins or empty water bottles wrapped in crepe paper or toilet paper, complete with googly eyes, that you try to knock over with a small ball) or options that involve food, like bobbing for doughnuts (tie a string around the hole of a doughnut and secure it to a tree - see how fasts your guests can eat the doughnut without using their hands!).
Our inflatable frame games have holes for kids to throw bean bags or small balls into, and they’re great to set up around the yard and offer prizes for the best throws. Some are even Halloween themed, like Zombie Hunt, Ghostly Ghouls, and Trick or Treat!
A Halloween piñata is also an option. Whether it’s in the shape of a pumpkin, a bat, or a ghost, your young guests will have tons of fun smacking it to try and get the candy out.
You can’t go wrong with a costume parade, either. This is especially great if you’re skipping out on trick-or-treating for the party - it gives your kids a chance to show off their costumes. People can even vote for their favorites!
Inflatables!
Of course, we can’t forget to mention inflatables from Pogo Bounce House. Right now, we’re holding a Backyard Boo Bash sale, including a wide variety of inflatable bounce houses and inflatable frame games.
Bounce houses are great for kids to jump off all their energy from candy, and setting them up ensures that there’s no chance of your kids getting bored at the party. Choose from toddler bounce houses or inflatables for older kids!
Getting Crafty
After the kids are tired out from the games, it’s the perfect time to sit down for a Halloween craft. You can make tiny scarecrows with popsicle sticks and fabric scraps, or even create haunted houses out of recycled materials.
Pasta skeletons are a good option, too. All you need to do is draw a skeleton on a piece of paper and fill in the shape with white glue and different shapes of uncooked pasta.
And it wouldn’t be Halloween if we didn’t decorate pumpkins. Carving pumpkins isn’t the safest activity for a kids’ party, but painting pumpkins is accessible to everyone. Let your kids show off their creativity with this craft. They can even add fun accessories like googly eyes, hair, and rhinestones!
Sending Treat Bags
Even if your guests are going trick-or-treating, no kid will turn down a goody bag after a party. Have your kids help decorate the bags with stamps, stickers, and ribbon, then fill it with goodies like Halloween cookies, hard candy, and popcorn.
Have a Happy Halloween!
This season is a favorite for many people, and we hope that these tips (and our products) can help make it even better. From those of us at Pogo Bounce House: Happy Halloween!