If you have little ghoulies and ghosties running around this October—or if you’re a little goblin at heart—you might want to bring out some fun Halloween games to play on the big day. With a little craftiness and creativity, you can morph any regular game into a Halloween-based game—or even make up your own. Here are 10 Halloween game ideas to use this year. Feel free to swap some of your own ideas in!
Ghost Beanbag Toss: Kids love to play beanbag toss games, and this tutorial will show you how to make your toss board in the shape of a cute ghost! (The blog itself, one of my favorites, is also worth following.)
Spooky Charades: Come up with a list of Halloween creatures for little ones to act out and get people to guess. You could include ghosts, goblins, mummies, trolls, ogres, fairies, and whatever creatures you like. Since this can be difficult for little ones to do, you could even let them make noises (such as “Boo!”).
Bobbing for Hearts: I’ve never been a big fan of bobbing for apple games; I don’t think they seem like much fun, or sanitary, for that matter. But if you’re going to do it anyway, give it a nice, spooky name and use red apples, which sort of look like red hearts.
Eyeball Races: Instead of balancing an egg on a spoon, have kiddos race with peeled grapes—less mess! To make it creepier, let them pick out their own grape out of a bowl, already peeled, so it feels gross.
Zombie Tag: Play tag, but instead of freezing, being “It,” or whatever else you normally do when playing tag, have each person tagged become a zombie. They have to walk slowly with arms out and say, “Brains!”
Wake the Dead: Remember when they played this on The Addams Family? Instead of digging up real dead people, have each player pretend to be dead, laying on the ground. The person who is “It” has to walk around, waking them up. He or she must approach slowly, and if the “dead” person wakes first and scares “It,” he or she must swap places with him/her.
Monster Mash: Play this instead of musical chairs, using Halloween songs. The same rules apply.
Ghoul, Ghoul, Ghost! Play this instead of duck, duck, goose with little kiddos.
Don’t Drop the Ghost: Blow up a white balloon and toss it around; little kids can’t let it touch the floor!
Pin the Fangs on Dracula: Make your own version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Other variants might include pinning the glow-eyes on the ghost, the stem on the pumpkin, etc.