Having a Halloween party for younger children and preschool children definitely comes with its own set of challenges. Halloween parties have to be fun and entertaining, without being scarry, and still maintain the spirit of Halloween. Not an easy undertaking.

But it can be done...

The Halloween party plan below is designed for younger children, and is designed to be a costume party -- what would any Halloween party be without the costumes?

Setting The Stage

The fun begins as soon as the kids arrive at the party location (most likely your house). You can start setting the stage for a non-frightening Halloween party by decorating the outside entrance of your house. You can decorate around the entrance with jack-o-lanterns, painted pumpkins, and any other simple decorations that you think would be appropriate. Don't make it too scary. Just use enough decorations to get their attention and let them know something special is on the other side. Little things like this are what kids remember and talk about for a long time!

Now that you've set the stage on the outside, it's time to set up your inside decorations. Preschoolers don't expect anything fancy -- in fact, they probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway -- so keep your inside decorations simple, disposable, and safe.

The first thing you'll want to do is cover your furniture and tables with either a black cloth or a Halloween themed cloth. This will protect your furniture and go a long way toward you decorating. After you get everything covered, you'll probably want to put up some Halloween themed lighting. Mini skeleton lights, lighted pumpkins, or even plain twinkle lights all help to instantly set the mood for your party.

Next, you'll want to place some black and orange streamers, balloons, etc. around the room. Once that's done, you can see what areas need a little extra attention. In those areas, you can use pumpkins, cardboard halloween decorations, tissue balls, etc. One way you can save money on the basic Halloween decorating is to purchase a Halloween Decorating Kit. The kit contains most of the 'special' decorations you'll need.

A Special Memory Making Opportunity

If you decide to have one splurge for your preschool Halloween party, this has to be it.

You can have each child pose for a picture next to this blowup pumpkin. Then when you send out your thank you cards, you can send the picture to the parents. The other parents will love that you were able to capture such a precious memory for them.

If you have a digital camera, you can instantly print out the pictures and send them home with the kids in an inexpensive Halloween frame as a party favor that they will treasure. There are more memory making ideas here.

One final note on setting the stage, don't forget to put on age-appropriate Halloween music before the guests arrive.

Halloween Activities

Piñatas - Piñatas can be a lot of fun for children's parties, but they don't always work out as well as you wish. If you choose to use a piñata as one of your party activities, you'll need a lot of room to play so no one gets hit. In addition, you'll probably want to get one that has a pull cord to let the filling out -- smaller children usually don't hit hard enough to break it open.

Treats 'n Guts - Fill a large container with something disgusting like spaghetti, jello, grapes, and anything else you can think of that is slimy. Bury small plastic prizes in the 'guts' and turn down the lights. The kids then dig through the container to find the prizes.

Pin the Wart on The Witch - Play the game exactly like pin the tail on the donkey, only you're trying to get the wart on the end of the witch's nose. You can also do pin the smile on the jack-o-lantern.

Guess How Many - This is an old standby game for many different kinds of parties. Fill a jar with candy corn and have guests guess how many are in the jar. (Don't forget to count as you put them in the jar!) Place the jar near the door and hand each guest a 3x5 card to put their name, their guess and their favorite Halloween candy. Halfway through the party read them all off and announce the winner. You won't be able to do this game if the children are too young to understand the concept.

Goblins - Spread a pile of wrapped candy on a table or large tray. Give each guest a container like a small bag, bowl, or paper cup. Set a timer for 30 seconds and have the kids get as much candy into their containers as possible without using their hands. When time is up, the one with the most pieces wins, but everyone gets to keep the candy they maneuvered into their containers.

Halloween Memory Game - Place a few themed items such as a candy corn, apple, mini pumpkin, plastic spider, etc. on a tray. Show the tray to the guests for a few seconds, then have them call out as many items as they can remember.

Who's Got the Pumpkin - Place everyone is a circle. Start a Halloween themed song and toss a mini pumpkin to one person, they throw it to the next, and so on until the music stops. The person who is caught holding the pumpkin has to leave the circle. The last one left is the winner and keeps the pumpkin!

Musical Chairs - another old fashioned game. This one plays to Halloween music.

Halloween Hunt - Using the same idea as an Easter Egg Hunt hide little bags of candy corn, or other fun candy around the room, outside, or in a basement. Set the kids loose and let them find the candy. Be sure to keep back several extra in case someone does poorly.

What To Serve

Depending on what night of the year you decide to have your Halloween party, there may not be too much food that you need to prepare. If you choose to have your party on Halloween and make it part of trick-or-treating, then the kids will eat a lot of their candy and only want to nibble on a few other things. Either way, you'll want to keep your menu very simple.

When you set up your serving table, you'll want to think of it like kind of a buffet. Cover your table with a black cloth. Set out your food, plates, napkins, plastic ware, etc. I usually put drinks at one end with cups, finger foods at the opposite end, and 'real' food in the middle. After I get all the food placed, then I put some little decorations out to dress up the table. Remember, the food is part of your overall presentation.

Ingredients 1 Pillsbury® Moist Supreme® Devil's Food Cake Mix 1 cup sour cream 1 egg 1 box oval sandwich cookies Frosting to decorate (gray)

1. Pour one box of dry Devil's food cake mix into a medium-sized bowl.

2. Add one cup of sour cream along with one egg. Mix well with spatula until all the batter is moist and has a mousse-like consistency.

3. Proceed by greasing and flouring a large pan.

4. With clean fingers, take a small handful of batter and make a long rectangle (this will not be a perfect rectangle, it will look very dirt-like). Rectangle should be about 1 inch by 4 inches. These will spread out a bit, so be sure to leave equal space between each bar.

5. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 15 minutes or until springy to the touch.

6. While bars are baking, divide your sandwich cookies in half and scrape out the frosting. Frost as desired to decorate your headstones.

7. When bars are baked and have cooled, cut a very small slit in them 3/4 of the way up. Frosting works great for glue.

8. Frost the slit and add your headstone to finish your Halloween masterpiece.

9. Have fun! These spooky treats are wonderful served a la mode and drizzled with hot fudge. Makes 12 to 14 bars.

Party Cake Recipes...

Witch's Brew

Mix 1 bottle 7-Up or Sprite, 1 large can of pineapple juice, and 1/2 can of frozen lemonade (thawed) together. Add red, green, and yellow food coloring until you get the desired color -- I like to go for a swampy look. Add a frozen hand mold (do this in advance... see below).

One really fun idea is to make this up at the party and let the kids watch. What you do is make a real production of it -- use a cauldron, call each of the ingredients by spooky names (like pineapple juice could be swamp water for example), and turn it into kind of a ceremony. You can also include other things into the brew like coconut (warewolf toenails), gummy worms (must have got caught up in the swamp water) etc. You can be as creative as you want with this and make it scarry, or funny.

Creepy Floating Hand for Witches Brew

Fill rubber surgical gloves with colored water or fruit juice. Tie shut and freeze. Gently remove glove and place hand in punch. Don't worry if finger breaks off, just toss in the punch too... it will give it a special touch. Be sure not to use powdered gloves for this!

Ingredients:

Directions:

Cut each of the chicken tenders in half the long way to make them long and skinny. Then simply follow the instructions on the Shake n' Bake box and cook each of the chicken tenders as directed. Then the chicken is done, serve with ranch dip, ketup, or barbeque sauce for dipping.

You can also try to get a few veggies into them by putting some out cut up veggies with the chicken.

Melt some chocolate chips in the microwave. Add chow mein noodles and mix until the noodles are well-coated. Place them by tablespoon full on wax paper and chill for at least 8 hours.

Halloween Cookies - Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe and cut them out with Halloween cookie cutters. Once baked and cooled, frost and decorate as desired.

Halloween Cupcakes - Make or buy cupcakes as you normally do, then decorate them for Halloween.

Other Snacks

You'll want to add some other muchies to the party table to make sure that everyone has something to eat. Chips, popcorn, pretzels, trail mix, m & m's, rice krispie treats, etc. all work well. In addition, you'll want to provide other drinks besides the punch... especially water, but you may also want to include soda or drink boxes.

Don't Let Them Leave Empty Handed

Creating or buying party favors and prizes is really easy when you're dealing with younger children. They love cheap little toys, temporary tattoos, coloring books, crayons, markers, etc. In addition, you can make special treats and wrap them up in Halloween treat bags to hand out as favors.

As I mentioned above, inexpensively framed pictures of each child make excellent favors for the kids and their parents. You can get a set of 12 really cute Pumpkin Patch Photo Magnets from Oriental Trading Company (search for item #IN-48/2641) very inexpensively. If you decide to hand out Halloween photos of the children, you may want to wait until the end of the party, or give them to the adult that accompanied each child.

Another way to get double duty out of your decorations is to give them away as party favors or prizes. I don't know any preschooler who wouldn't love to take a mylar ballon home with them as a prize.

If you decide to purchase party favors and prizes, Oriental Trading Company can be a life saver. It's a great place to pick up some cheap prizes, decorations, and even Trick-or-Treat items.