Kids Like to Par-teh

Even after telling June that we might do a Halloween party, I wanted to repent from the statement and tell her we ran out of time. But after finding some simple ideas on the internet, I decided to just do it. Really, kids are easy to please. They just want to get together and play.

We made it a costume party and I was pleased to see that all the kids dressed up. This was good because we had a costume contest.

As everyone arrived we had them play 'Don't Eat Pete' with candy corn. You can find a template for almost any holiday on the internet.

Then we had the kids stand in a circle and each stood in turn to tell what they were dressed as. They could each vote for their three favorite costumes. (But not their own.) Tyler tallied votes while we played 'Celebrity.' Actually, I just looked up the rules for 'Celebrity' and that is NOT what we played. Apparently I need to rename the game. Basically everyone gets a slip of paper and writes down a word in a category. Our category was anything to do with Halloween. Then someone reads each paper aloud once (we read them twice to be nice) and then each person takes turns guessing who wrote which word. If they guess correctly, that person joins their team. Since they were a LOT of kids, I paired them up in twos. That way we had less words to guess and each person had someone to help them guess. We had great words like, spider on a web, costumes, boo!, skeleton, mad scientist, soul, and eyeball soup. The kids were so excited every time they guessed correctly and incorporated people onto their team.

After that game we announced the winners of the costume contest. I only got a trophy for first place, but I think all the runners-up felt special.

Honorable Mention: Vanellope didn't arrive in time for the voting, but I thought she looked really cute.

5th Place:

4th Place:

3rd Place - a tie

2nd Place:

And 1st Place:

Then we gave the kids an option. We had all the ingredients on hand for Monster Cookies. (Thanks mom for the idea!!) But we also could play 'Mafia.' It was a good split. The girls from June's class opted to play Mafia.

And Robyn and Ivory's friends (they each invited a couple people) opted for Monster Cookies. Kami and Doug were super nice to man the kitchen while I killed people in the other room.

All their creations were super cute.

Half an hour to parties end, we stopped all games and threw the kids outside to play night games.

Honestly, this was probably their favorite part. They played 'Warden.' It is like tag with a flashlight. When the warden catches someone, he puts them in jail, but other players can get them out if the warden isn't looking. If the warden catches someone three times, they are 'it.' Or, you can just change the warden every so often. I didn't supervise at all. They did their own thing and seemed to really enjoy it. As parents arrived to retrieve children, we'd yell out back or wait for kids to go running by.

I believe the evening was a success. And we only had to take four jackets back to school on Monday. I'm glad my kids have good friends.

For the record, we had pictionary and bingo that we never even got to. Planning a party for kids doesn't have to be hard. You just need to be able to handle the high decibels.