4 Ways to Burn off the Sugar and Get Kids Active This Halloween

Kids Running in Pumpkin Patch

If you’ve got little ones at home, a fun alternative to trick-or-treating is a Halloween party. You don’t have to worry about the weather, too-spooky scares, and buckets and buckets of sugar. You can still make the night a memorable and festive affair with fun games, snacks, and of course, some activities that get them up, moving, and burning off some of that energy. Here are some of our favourite ways to get goblins up and moving.

Monster freeze dance
Put on ‘Monster Mash’ and other seasonal tunes. Have kids show off their silliest monster dance moves, but they must freeze in place when the tunes turn off!

Pumpkin bowling
Choose smallish pumpkins with short stems (depending on the ages of your party guests). Set up 1- or 2-liter plastic bottles and tape off a starting line for an instant bowling alley. Fill the bottles with a bit of sand or rice if they topple over too easily. You can also have kids decorate the bottles with stickers, markers, and other art materials.

Musical pumpkins
Cut pumpkin shapes from construction paper and arrange them on the floor; kids must move from pumpkin to pumpkin while music plays, just like in musical chairs. To keep kids from being excluded, allow them to share pumpkins as you remove a pumpkin for each round. By the end of the game, all the kids have to squeeze onto one spot. For variety, you could also use spider webs, tombstones, or witchy cauldrons for targets.

Wiggle worm
This goofy race requires kids to work together (and stick together) as a team. Divide the group into two equal teams. Teams must line up and form a ‘worm’. The person at the front of the line reaches his left hand between his legs; the player behind him grabs it with her right hand; and so on all the way to the end of the line. When you say ‘Go’ (or ‘Boo!’), each team must run to a goal line and back. Whichever team gets back first is the winner’€”but only if their worm is still intact!

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