How to Throw a Great Halloween Party for Kids

As Halloween approaches, you’ll need bewitching and boo-tiful inspiration to throw a great party for your kids. Whether you’re planning a hauntingly hip party for pre-teens or hosting a spooktacular soiree for the neighborhood kids, there’s no need to spend a fortune to transform your home into a party palace. 

Using our expert Halloween party-planning ideas, your children – and their friends – will have a frightfully fun and fabulous time. 

Invitations 

Make spooky, yet inexpensive invites. To save money, make your own paper invitations in the shape of pumpkins, tombstones, black bats, and witches’ brooms. 

Create these invites using black or white poster board and stencils. After you cut out these Halloween-inspired shapes, write the party details on the back of the cutouts with a metallic silver or gold paint pen. 

Dress Code 

Get ready for a Halloween costume party! Ask guests to dress in their scariest costumes or wear masks. While the kids will gladly wear costumes to your Halloween hangout, don’t forget about their parents. Ask their family members to wear costumes and join in on the fun too. 

If you give prizes for the best costume, all party guests are sure to put thought into their garb. Encourage party guests without costumes to stay and play. See if you can get them in the spirit! 

Fill a small bin with oversized hats, scary masks, fake clown noses, or funny plastic glasses for guests to wear and enjoy the festivities. 

Decor 

Decorate your front yard for a wicked welcome. Hang white paper ghosts from your tree limbs. Cut out cardboard tombstones to decorate your front yard and create creepy curb appeal. Spray-paint these cutouts with silver, black, and white paint. 

Create a frightful front door and foyer. Tape a white and black paper skeleton on the front door. Set the tone for your haunted house party by replacing your porch lights with red and orange light bulbs. 

Hang a spider web across your front porch using strings of white holiday lights. Don’t forget to hang small black spiders from the white lights to add visual intrigue to your scary spider web. 

Set a spooky and sophisticated buffet table. If you are serving food buffet style, drape your tables with dark satin tablecloths. Accessorize the table with silver votive holders, fake black crows, birds nests, and small, spray-painted silver pumpkins. To illuminate the display, attach white plastic spiders to hurricanes filled with black pillar candles and black and white sand. 

For the centerpiece, fill a tall, white vase with sticks from your backyard or garden. Tie small, plastic spiders to the end of the sticks with white and black yarn to create a fresh and fun table display. For a party of 25 guests, stock the table with 40 medium-size plates, forks, napkins and spoons. 

Place your cutlery in Mason jar mummies. To create these ghoulish glasses, wrap three or four mason jars with gauze. Hot glue two googly eyes on the front of the jars to complete this quick and easy craft project. 

Decorate the room for a ghoulishly good time. To decorate the ceiling, cut black cat and bat shapes from construction paper. Suspend these cutouts from the ceiling using white dental floss and clear tape. 

If your party guests are ten and younger, it is best to decorate with fun and fresh Halloween décor items, instead of scary and dark skeletons or zombies. Unfortunately, these classic and scary characters may frighten and upset your smallest and youngest partygoers. 

Food & Drink 

Serve boo burgers. Upgrade your basic chicken or beef patties with yellow and white cheese slices. Carve those simple slices of cheese into ghosts, pumpkins or any of your favorite Halloween characters using a simple stencil. Place these scary slices on top of veggie, chicken, or beef burgers for a fun twist on party food. 

Pour punch from a pumpkin. Scrub and clean the outside of a large pumpkin with a vegetable brush. Carefully slice off the top of the pumpkin. Scoop out the seeds and the fibers with an ice cream scoop or a large metal spoon. 

Using a wax pencil and a stencil, draw the outline of a witch, goblin, or broomstick on the front of the pumpkin. With the tip of a sharpened knife, scrape out the design gently. Fill your new punch bowl with your favorite fruity and kid-friendly beverages. 

Serve eerie monster snacks and ghoulish goodies. Fill a parchment-lined cookie sheet with small, salted pretzels. Pipe squiggles of white decorating icing over the pretzels. Press two candy eyes into the salty snacks to create mini monster treats. If you want a healthy, monster-treat alternative, toast pumpkin seeds in butter and a little salt. Roast the seeds for 45 minutes at 300 degrees. 

Serve Frankenstein’s brains and creepy cupcakes for dessert. To create the Frankenstein dessert, put three or four drops of green food coloring into vanilla pudding. Place small, candy worms – or Frankenstein’s brains – into the bottom of four-ounce, clear plastic cups. Pour the green pudding over the worms. Sprinkle crushed Oreo cookies on the top of the pudding. Draw Frankenstein faces on the outside of the cups with a black Sharpie. 

For adults and older kids, place 35 to 40 Devils food, red velvet and vanilla cupcakes on a silver party platter. Let your guests decorate the frosted cupcakes with gummy worms, sprinkles, and crushed Oreo cookies. 

Party Crafts and Games for Kids 

Stage a Halloween costume parade. If you do not plan to take your children trick-or-treating, lead them in a parade around your front or back yard to show off their costumes. Give parents and their children prizes for best costume, most creative, cutest and scariest. 

Hit the Halloween piñata. Buy a piñata in the shape of a pumpkin, bat, or ghost. Fill up the piñata with candy. Before your smallest guests take a swing with a plastic bat, place a cotton bandana over their eyes. 

Make pasta skeletons. For your crafty elementary school aged party guests, set up a skeleton-making station. Before the party, draw skeletons on black construction paper with a piece of white chalk. For the skeleton patterns, download copyright-free designs online. Let the smallest party participants fill in the skeleton shape with white glue and different types of uncooked pasta shells. 

Goodie Bags & Party Favors 

Send the partygoers home with goodie bags filled with candy apples, roasted pumpkin seeds, and small bags of pre-wrapped candy.