Halloween party!

Jamie has always loved Halloween. This year he kept asking over and over for a Halloween party. He also asked several times to see his preschool group from last year, so finally I decided we could combine the two and have a party for that group. I involved Jamie in the planning as much as I could, showing him different ideas I found online and letting him pick the decorations. We had a great time planning it together, and the party turned out to be so fun!

I am really lucky my friend Brianna was there. She took some awesome pictures, and I am so thankful! Almost all of these came from her.

Jamie was so excited to decorate. He wanted to do it days in advance. It was hard to convince him to wait until the day of the party.

We had them guess how many candy corns there were in the jar. I thought it would be funny with preschoolers. :) And on the right are the bat party favors I made.

some of the guests! a "peacock princess," Snow White and Cinderella, and Sully from Monsters, Inc.

I don't know what it is about Thomas that encourages little kids to chase and tackle him, but this happens every time Jamie has friends over.

When the guests arrived, we had them create monsters with construction paper cut-outs and googly eyes, but I don't have any pictures of the actual process. I was busy still trying to get the food ready. :)

Then Thomas told them a couple of Halloween stories. First, he told them "In a Dark, Dark, Room." Jamie loves scary things so much that I forget other little kids actually get afraid. A couple of them were legitimately scared by his storytelling! Then he read a library book called Ten Creepy Monsters.

We had three games planned for the party. The first was pin-the-nose on the jack-o-lantern.

The second game was pumpkin bowling. The pins were paper towels with black eyes and mouths to look like ghosts, and the ball was a pumpkin.

Our last game was bobbing for doughnuts. We had doughnuts hanging from a string and the kids were supposed to try to eat them without using their hands. It was hilarious to watch. Most of them did a good job following the no-hands rule, but not Jamie. He was going to eat that doughnut right then and there, rules be darned.

 

Finally, we had some Halloween-themed snacks prepared. We had mummies and vampire blood (hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll strips with ketchup), ghosts and pumpkins (bananas with chocolate chips and clementines with celery stems), witch fingers (string cheese with sliced almonds), and graveyard cups (chocolate pudding, crushed oreos, Peep ghosts, and candy corn pumpkins). Again, it didn't occur to me that kids would actually be weary of any of that because Jamie is actually more likely to eat something if we pretend it's something spooky or gross. But at least one girl wouldn't touch the "blood." Oops.

When they finished eating, the kids talked and played a little more and that was that! We made sure they got their bat favors before they went home.

Oh, and we announced the winner of the candy corn game. There were actually 153.

We had so much fun at this party!! I'm glad Jamie convinced me to throw it. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more Halloween parties in our future...