Throw a Calm, Happy Kids' Halloween Party — 5 Tips From a Mom
Halloween is my family's favorite holiday. We love celebrating it to the fullest, and that means throwing an annual house party. Every year since my children were born, we’ve hosted something for them to commemorate the occasion. In the beginning it was a quiet dinner with the grandparents. Then it grew into a backyard bouncy-house affair for the preschool families. Before long we were inviting what felt like every young family in the neighborhood. For a few years, we had about 70 to 80 costumed bodies of varying ages running around our modest-size house. It was fun — until it wasn’t.
Furniture broke, walls got chipped, little handprints showed up everywhere, and just about every square inch of flooring indoors and out was glazed with unidentified sticky residue. I’d spend longer cleaning up after the festivities than enjoying them.
It was time to call it quits on those big-scale home parties in favor of drop-off parties that were friendlier to house and hostess. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years for throwing a successful and tame children's Halloween house party. I hope you can glean some helpful hints for your own party — and please share any other helpful advice in the Comments.
1. Limit the guest list. You want only the number of kids you can fit around a table for structured art projects. I learned the hard way that young party revelers need direction. Give kids free rein and suddenly you’ve got a pack of them in your master bedroom closet pulling down purses.
If you 1) limit your guest list to a manageable number and 2) give the kids something to keep their artistic minds and hands busy, everyone wins.
2. Let your kids make the invitations. My favorite way to kick-start the Halloween season is to brainstorming our upcoming party with my kids and make those all-important invitations that set the party's mood.
With everyone’s busy schedules, it’s best to get invitations into people's hands as early as possible. We send them at the beginning of the month, even before our decorations go up.
These jack-o'-lanterns are one of our favorite homemade invitations. The kids get so motivated after making invitations that they beg to help me with the rest of the house decorations.
3. Decorate the house in age-appropriate ways. We used to have a life-size singing zombie at our front porch. My young kids at the time thought it was hilarious, but some of their friends were terrified by it. The poor zombie had to go.
A word about candles: When we have a houseful of children, we take special care to use real burning candles only when an adult is stationed next to them. Otherwise we prefer battery-operated ones.
We still try to use an array of mildly spooky displays (think oversize spider webs, bubbling cauldrons and flying bats), but nothing that looks so real that a child can’t recognize it as pretend.
To temper anything that might freak out youngsters, we always add something lighthearted, like the Real Housewife of Pumpkinville shown here.
This photo, taken a few years ago, shows what I've learned not to do anymore: put treats in easy-to-reach spots.
4. Make healthy stuff accessible on your food table. You wouldn’t create a bedroom or living room in which you couldn’t easily access the bed or sofa. Translate this to healthy party food. Most of us don’t associate Halloween with health, and that’s exactly why guests at our house parties will always find veggies and fruits on the outermost regions of the dining table. This may be all a kid can reach without assistance, making him or her more prone to fill up on produce before being able to access the sugary snacks placed at the center of the table.
I’m not a health fanatic, just a mother who’s seen too many kids leave my home with a green cast to their faces. This includes my own children. It stinks to end a good party feeling like you’re going to be sick.
5. Offer games that work with the flow of your house. When the crafts have been exhausted, I like to have an assortment of games that keep little guests rotating through the spaces I want them in, and that divert them from the rooms they have no business entering.
To facilitate this, I'll likely set a bingo game around the coffee table, doughnuts on a string on the front porch, an oversize memory game on the back lawn and a Pin the Tail on the Cat game on a wall far enough away from anything or anyone that can be stumbled over.
From our family to yours, have a happy and safe Halloween!
Houzzers: What are your plans for a safe and sane Halloween house party?
