Only 7? We believe in quality over quantity!
Are you with us? Yes, some lists of Halloween party games for kids have 70-million ideas, but who has time to go through that many. Or even 50 of them? Let’s get serious for a moment, parents. We all know that kids have a lot of energy, but we also know that parents have very little time.
The idea here is to help you find a few Halloween party games for kids that are actually fun, and don’t take up too much of your precious time. We’ve got three ideas for young kids and four ideas for tweens and young adults. We’ll mark each one for age appropriateness. (Again, helpful! Love us yet?)
7 Unusually Fun Halloween Party Games for Kids
Here’s our hand-picked list of 7 unusual Halloween party games for kids.
1 – Find the Vampire at the Party
Suggested Age Range: 8 to 18 years old
This is a fun party game for tweens and teens. Before the party, select someone from the guest list to be the vampire. Ask that person to arrive early. When they do, explain the following. They are secretly a vampire at the party. If they touch someone’s shoulder, they can turn that person into a vampire. They need to do it without anyone else at the party seeing them.
As the party progresses, you can make an announcement that there’s a vampire on the loose – maybe more than one! At this point, all the guests will become detectives and ask questions to determine who’s a vampire and who’s not been bitten yet. If all the vampires are caught before the end of the party, the remaining humans get a prize. If the vampires aren’t caught at the end of the party, they win a prize.
You can adjust the rules to make this game appropriate for younger children. Instead of “turning” people into vampires, the vampire can just scare them. Or, the vampires can give a person a party favor to turn them into a vampire – or another monster. The idea is to have fun an explore the “paranormal” a little bit with a fun mystery that can develop as the party goes on. (Hint: Maybe have a “ghost” walk around to spook the kids too.)
2 – Halloween Charades
Suggested Age Range: 8 to 18 years old
This is a basic charades game, but all the clues have to be Halloween themed. So, you could have Ghostbusters or another scary kids movie like Goosebumps. The idea is to play normal charades but have everything be centered around Halloween. To heighten the mood, you can dim the lights and even add spooky music in the background. This game is a classic and it’s a good one to play.
You can keep score and give out party favors at the end to the winning team. To make this game appropriate for a younger crowd, do “regular” charades. Young people love being silly and acting goofy, so let them. This game is fun anyway and a great way to keep young minds active. If there’s a lot of people, you can try separating into smaller groups and having a tournament.
To run a charades tournament, simply pick the teams and have them play head-to-head. Have a time limit and score each team based on the number of right answers. If a team gets too many wrong answers, they’re out! Keep playing until there’s a final winning team. They can win an extra special treat or a small prize like some extra candy you might have on hand anyway.
3 – Haunted House
Suggested Age Range: 10 to 18 years old
For our last Halloween party game idea for older kids, we give you the classic haunted house. If you have a basement or attic that can be used as a “haunted house”, then that’s ideal. If not, you can either ask if you can rent or borrow a space or you can use a large tent to form a haunted house. You can decorate it with fake spider webs, plastic spiders, fake bats, or anything else you can use as decor to make it look like a spooky haunted house.
This one takes a lot of work beforehand, but it’s worth it. Your guests will love it. If you have the time and space, you can even ask some of your older guests to dress up as ghosts, vampires, ghouls, and other spooky characters. Don’t forget the sound effects! Sometimes, just dim lighting and spooky sounds can really set the mood and turn a normal area of the house into a haunted area for the night.
You’ll need to work up some “rules” to make this a proper game. For example, once someone goes into the haunted house, they can’t come out until they’ve completed the “dangerous” haunted house obstacle course. This way, it’s not entirely up to the person to see if they can complete it or not. You can even have little prizes that can be given out to reward success for the little mini-games or tasks in the haunted house.
4 – Find the Spooky Eggs
Suggested Age Range: 4 to 12 years old
Okay, okay, this one is cribbing off Easter a bit, but please forgive us! This is still a great way to make Halloween fun for younger kids without trick or treating or leaving the house. All you need to do is buy some plastic eggs – or use the ones leftover from Easter. Once you have them, fill them with candy or other treats. Then hide them throughout the house. That’s it. Simple, right? Yes, but kids still love it.
This Halloween party game for kids is quick and simple and won’t cost too much money either. Just be sure to not make the eggs too hard to find if you have younger children. Sometimes, the younger kids will just have a blast being apart of something, even if they don’t exactly understand what is going on. Because of this, something simple like “Find the Spooky Eggs” can still be a great game for them.
5 – Pumpkin Carving Competition
Suggested Age Range: 4 to 12 years old
We’re borrowing another time-tested classic but putting our own Hoosier spin on it. For a pumpkin carving competition, you have children carve pumpkins then judge them on a number of factors at the end of the night. Winners can receive additional candy or treats as prizes. This one is easy to do and can still be a lot of fun.
By including prizes, it helps to keep the game interesting. If you want to take it up a notch, you can create a scoring system for the kids and even award points for things like creativity, realism, and more. fYou’ll need to figure every detail out ahead of time – like if you’ll be judging by a number of factors. This might be hard, but be as organized as possible. You can do it!
Another thing to note is that if you have really small children, you’ll want to make sure to get safe pumpkin carving tools from the Dollar Tree or even from Amazon if you need to. The last thing you want is a sharp knife or a sharp object that’s going to cut your child’s hands. Safety first! Luckily, there’s a lot of safe tools for kids to use to help carve pumpkins these days. If a child is too young, just ask them what they want to carve – get them involved. They’ll feel more important and they can join in on the fun.
6 – Pumpkin Decorating Contest
Suggested Age Range: 4 to 12 years old
Here’s a game that your little kids will just love. It’s really simple, really easy, and super fun. For a pumpkin decorating contest, you have kids decorate pumpkins and then set them up on display for people to vote on. You can reward the winners alone, or you can combine it with the previous idea. However, this time there’s no carving or complexities involved. Instead, use a good safe paint to allow kids to decorate them.
Oh, and stickers. Most kids love stickers, and giving them an opportunity to stick them without getting yelled at will have them in heaven! It’s super easy, and the cleanup at the end isn’t bad either. Getting enough pumpkins for everyone attending might be tricky, so you could also break everyone down into teams. By doing this, you can make sure everyone has a chance to decorate a pumpkin if you want to save pumpkins for the rest of the year.
7 – Story Telling
Suggested Age Range: 4 to 12 years old
Here’s another easy one! For a story telling game, simply have parents or older kids write stories about Halloween. You can make it as easy as you want. The key is to have them write their stories ahead of time so that you can read them at the party. To heighten the mood, dim the lights and have them read their stories in a spooky voice.
You can award prizes to the best story tellers. Even better, video record the performances and post them to YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter later. You never know – you might end up with a show that people love! In all seriousness, this is a super easy Halloween party game for kids that can be a lot of fun. However, some kids might not have fun writing a story. What do you do then?
Well, I would look online to find some stories that are already written. You can print these out and have guests read a random one. Or they could choose by reading the titles. The idea is to have them read the story, not write one. This way, you don’t have to worry about all the rules of a story writing contest. A lot of younger kids will have fun reading a spooky story.
Halloween Party Games for Kids: Conclusion and Recap
Those were our best Halloween party games for kids. We hope you enjoyed our list and that you were able to find one that you felt was perfect for your kids. If you have any additional ideas for something that isn’t listed here, we’d love to hear about them. Just drop us a line at our Hoosier Chapter Books Facebook group to let us know! Thanks for reading! Stay spooky!
