Brownie Troup Halloween Party

When I was a Brownie leader some time ago!we went to the pumpkin patch where the girls picked out pumpkins then we dvecorated them. They all dressed in costumes and brought old clothes from home and made bodies for their pumpkins which were stuffed with straw donated from a local farm. They mad masks out of cardstock and string Good luck I miss those days since my girls are grown

What's old is new again, once it's forgotten and rediscovered.
Going back to the roots of Halloween, it is the eve before the feast of All Saints (hallowed means sacred or holy) When we were kids, we would dress up like our patron or favorite saint. If this theme is too religious for comfort, you could secularize it by just having the girls dress up like their favorite heroine. A saint, after all is someone whom we respect and look up to, and want to be like. This was the original intent of the observance, not goulish or frightening things at all.

i'm suscribed to this website called parents.com, and it has a link for 100 days of holidays. one of the ideas that i love, but i'm still pregnant, so it's a no go for me right now.. is the halloween hodown. everyone dresses like cowboys or girls, and they decorate the pumpkins with straw hats and braided yarn pigtails and freckels. very very cute! they cooked chili and corn bread to make it all complete. i thought this was very kid friendly when you don't want anything scary

Look up Family Fun on the computer. They have great ideas for Halloween.

K.,

You need to check out oriental trading company, they have TONS of craft kits that are cheap and easy. I use to get the kits to do for gifts for my sons preschool and kindergarten classes! They have a web site (not sure if it is just the name) but they are a well known company!

Hope this helps!
C.

I take my daughter every year to a pumpkin patch along with the other mothers and children from where I work. My work provides snacks and small pumpkins for the kids and then we get to go on a hay ride with a corn maze. The one we go to also has farm animals that you can pet and feed. They have a corn kernel box to play in, it's like a sand box but full of corn seed instead of sand. The kids get to see how pumpkins grow along with sunflowers and cotton. It's a lot of fun and not scary at all. We also go to the Music and Molasses festival every year and watch how molasses and corn meal were made in the old days without electricity and machines. They have different musical acts and dancers, craft booths, a blacksmith, a wool demonstration, pony rides, native american crafts, soap making, leather tanning and a lot of other stuff. The Mounted Police are there with their horses and you can go thru the agricultural museum. They also do a variation on apple bobbing by hanging apples from a tree on twine and then you have to try to catch the apple with your teeth and can't use your hands. It's all very old fashioned and the scariest thing is the musket demonstration.

Have you thought about a scavenger/treasure hunt. We take pumpkins and clean them out like you would a Jack-o-lantern and instead of carving faces we put clues to the next point until they find the treasure which is bags of candy and trinkets for everyone. After the scavenger hunt we have a weenie roast and make smores. There is nothing scarey about it at all although with this age group an adult will have to help them figure out the clues they will love it. We have 30 acres of forrest behind our house and we rope off a couple of acres along a trail. You could easily do this at a park. You can make the scavenger hunt as easy or as difficult as you want. We never do a scavenger hunt where the clue leads you to the next pumpkin, instead we do a clue (question) that has to be answered and we separate the group into 3 groups of 6 (I usually have around 18). The group that answers the most questions correctly will win an additional prize, if there is a tie you should have a tie-breaker question at the end. My group loves this. They look forward to it every year. It does take a little planning but it's worth it and once you do it, it gets easier the next time. Good luck.

A long time ago when I helped my cousin we had a theme Halloween party. We talked about different themes at the meeting, agreed on a few, and voted. We had a small group and had equal votes for each thing. We decided to write the themes down and put them in a bowl. We then had one person draw one and that was our party theme. We used country western theme. The other themes were plants and animals. We had beans and weenies, chips and cupcakes with plastic cowboy hats on them. We pretended to have a campfire circle and made up stories about our travels in the covered wagon. Someone had camping plates, cups and silverware that we used also.

Try a theme like environmental awareness. Each kid could dress up as an endangered species. you can find beautiful pictures and background easily.

I actually was just looking over an owl-themed party for my son who is five. I think it'd be nice for kids from about 4-10.

It's in the Better Homes and Garden special Halloween publication.

The games are easily made, the crafts are fun, and the invites are cute.

K.,

I love the ideas the other ladies had. Here is a few more maybe this will help.

1. Halloween Bingo
2. Craft - Make a Halloween Picture Frame
3. Take a swimming pool, fill the pool about a1/4 of the way full and then get some foam fish push a metal brad through it (these will fold back for safety), then take a cane pole and tie fishing string on it with a magnet attahed to the bottom and try fishing for nemo.
4. Take a piece of styrofoam and cut it into a halloween figure, then take dum dum suckers and paint the bottom of some of the suckers for prizes, don;t paint all of them unless you want to give out a bunch of prize. You could use McDonalds gift cards for prizes - I seen these on the drive through window the other day.

GOOD LUCK!!

S.