Halloween Games for Our Daycare Party

lots of great ideas already posted! Here's mine: we play Pin the Hat on the Witch....all made from poster board.

We also play Build the Skeleton. Freeform draw bones onto poster board, cut them out, & then let the kids pull from the pile. The whole group then decides where to place the bone.....great learning activity!

Find the Eyeball- draw an eyeball on a ping pong ball & hide it in the ball pit. OR hide it in the room. (I've also done this with a whole bag of ping pong balls so the kids have a fairer chance.)

Wrap the Mummy....using teams of two, a baby doll, & TP. It's a blast...a blast, but a mess. Be prepared for the kids' frustration too. Sounds like a downer with all of the precautions, but it truly is fun.

Catch the Ghost: hang mini white powdered donuts from a line, just at head height for the kids. Line the kids up & let them catch the "ghosts" with just their mouths. **Note: we do this even with the older kids, but use blindfolds. When the kids got my husband to do it, they cheated & moved the line up & down so there was NO way for him to catch the ghost. It was a RIOT & the kids were belly-laughing over it forever!

OK, that's all off the top of my head! If you want more ideas, feel free to contact me. Have fun....& by the way, this question was perfect timing because we have an annual Halloween party & my 13 y.o. has been busy planning it!

Halloween can be really scary to kids this age. Some costumes are really awful and sometimes older children enjoying the 'scary' experience can terrify the young ones. When I did pre-school programs, I would focus on the idea of pretending and costumes.

One thing we did was to use paper grocery bags to make monsters. I would cut out holes for eyes and arms and the kids would color and paste their own monster. That way we could talk about how all monsters are pretend costumes that someone makes. Then, we would put on our monster bags and dance to halloween music. I always told the children that we 'play' halloween because we like to laugh at how people can make themselves look so different. You can also play a matching game of pictures of people in costume and the same people dressed normally.

It can also be fun to learn cute little rhymes or jokes the kids can use if someone asks them to provide a trick for their treats. In the neighborhood where I grew up we always had to have some song or joke to present when we we trick-or-treating. You can Google 'halloween jokes' or 'halloween songs'.

One more suggestion: I wouldn't hide plastic spiders. Those are usually small enough for a child to choke on and it might encourage the younger ones to pick up real spiders when they see one. There are a variety of other halloween toys that could be hidden.

The spiders in the ball pit sounds fun! My 2 yo DD enjoyed something similar (candy in loose hay) at Topeka RR days. She also likes playing the "shell game" where you hide something under a cup, then mix the cups around.

one simple free activity is "spider" races. Have them crawl like spiders. You can even make an obstacle course for them. The kids I have done this with were two and they loved it! You can also get one of the small pumpkins and use water bottles and try bowling. It isn't perfect but the kids enjoy it!

If you want messy....
~ make pudding or noodles w/grapes in it for them to explore
~ Have them paint with spiders
Hope these helped!

similar to what betsy suggests, get a cardboard and decorate it halloweeny, with four or five holes big enough for a bean bag, prop it up and have them try to toss bean bags into the holes. good luck and have fun!

tape the stem on the pumpkin. Make a Pumkin and tape to a door low, and make pumkin stems and have them try to tape it on.
get some $ gifts and put a large dishpan( also from $ store) put water in there and mark the spiders and they can get a toy that way. No losers. hehe.

have the parents each bring a small pumpkin and have the kids color and make a pumpkin to take home. no cut outs just coloring on them.

A game I ran for my toddler room that was quick and easy was just to go out a buy a couple of those jack o lantern style/pumpkin buckets line them in a row ( like from the Bozo show? ) and have them toss either ball pit balls or ping pong balls into them. Since it was for little kids I had special prizes for each bucket...but everyone got a prize no matter how they did. Lots of luck = )
B.

I didn't get a chance to read all the responses but last year I had a party for the same ages and did an Ester Egg Hunt in Halloween Style... instead of eggs and baskets, they I have special buckets for them to go out in the back yard and collect all the Halloween treats I scattered about. Instead of candy I tried to have more things like cearal bars, cookies, and little fishes which you can find at Sam's.
Have fun!
I loved it!

A fun and easy game would be bobbing for balloons! You can easily cut a stip of contruction paper and measure their head to make a headband. Put some scotch tape in the middle of the forehead. Have a basket or box filled with some blown up balloons and the have to stick a balloon on their forehead. You could easily toss in a roll of smarties inside their balloon for a prize.... of couse they have to sit on it to try and pop it to get it out!!! What fun!! Walmart also has a box of foam pumpkins for $5. It comes with different jack o lantern faces to stick to the pumpkin. Too make it cooler, you can stick a magnet to the back to enjoy on the frig! Have fun at your party! No matter what you do, they will all have fun!