Halloween Party - Cumberland,MD

I know you mentioned not wanting to carve pumpkins b/c of the mess (and I totally hear ya!) but I have a friend who has been having a little pumpkin carving party for years - and we do the whole thing on the driveway! When everyone is done the driveway is hosed off. I've personally never hosted it, but it seems pretty simple and mess free to me. They even have a couple of garbage cans set up ahead of time for the wet newspaper with all the goop :)

What I have seen for kids... toddlers... is:
you crumple up all the old newspaper you have, a big HUGE pile of it preferably.
Then, pile it up in a corner of a room... then hide little toys/treats in it... not small candy/toys because it is a choking hazard for kids this young.
Then, the kids just go in it and through it, and 'find' their treasures.
Its real fun for young kids... and easy to do/make.
Its also a great way to get rid of any toys/stuffed animals you have in your home... (wink), and you can use it as the 'prizes' for the kids in the pile of newspaper.
AND take photos of the kids in the pile of newspaper...

AND it is not something that the parents have to 'help' their kid do.... like with crafts. Especially at this age, a 1 year old cannot do crafts by themselves... or have the attention-span for it, to do it until completion.

good luck,
Susan

My twins were born on Halloween so this is something I can speak of!!
For their 2nd Bday, we did a full out costume party. I was lucky to rent a room at a meeting house so we had tons of room.
We had a couple 4' tall inflatable halloween things (smaller versions of the blow up santas and such you see on front lawns during holiday season) and we used these as decoration.
I also had an inflatable tube/little house thing that we inflated and the kids got to crawl thru and play in the house/fort part. (it was about 8' end to end).
We too got mini pumpkins and let the kids color them with markers (crayons don't work) and let them take them home. We played pin the nose on the pumpkin -I took a big poster board and colored a pumpkin on it without a nose and then cut out a bunch of construction paper noses and simply used tape and let the kids play without blind folds - too young for that.
I'm a planner but for this I knew it was better to just keep it simple and let them play. Since we had such a good size room, they got to run and play without running into furniture.
I made food for the adults and of course a cake (did a castle since my boys were dressed as Knights) and had tons of fruit and veggies/dip and of course goldfish crackers and nuggets for the kids.
It worked out quite well.

We did photos (for the kids that would sit still!) next to one of the blow up things (a cool looking black cat sitting on a pumpkin) and they turned out really great.

Just take a lot of pics, have lots of wipes, and enjoy it. As they get older, you can plan more of course, but for now, just dress them up real cute and have extra camera batteries!
Enjoy!
J.

You could have them "bob" for apples. Instead of actually bobbing, they could reach their hands in the bucket to find apples. You could even paint the apples or include other fruits to make it more interesting. You have have them do a pumpkin hunt, like an Easter egg hunt but with those tiny pumpkins. They could color a picture of a bat or other Halloween picture, decorate a cupcake, eat Jello jigglers cut into Halloween shapes, have an adult dress up in costume and read a Halloween story to them, they could all work together with a grown up to make a scarecrow, decorate sock puppet ghosts....ummm I think I'm out of ideas :) What a great idea! Have fun!

I helped a friend set up for hers last year - we made pin the nose on the pumpkin out of fabric and velcro as well as a pumpkin ball toss through the hoop. I've also heard of ghost bowling. Google toddler halloween party ideas and you'll find a ton more.

My kids get three pumpkins every year, each, We get three to carve, three to paint, and three to decorate. The paint and decorate ones are the little ones. But we get out all of our supplies (pom poms, pipe cleaner, glitter, googly eyes, sticky foam shapes,everything BUT paint for this one) and they decorate away! LOVE IT! We also let them paint - but that is an outside activity obviously....and when it rains, we paint again! And they pick the designs and I carve them....so maybe do a decorating stating and maybe a paint station? Ask the parents to bring two small pumpkins? Might be fun! Have fun with it!!

I'm guessing the parents will be around for the whole party since the kids are so young? Maybe the parents can help the kids make handprint bats? A couple templates are available online:
http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mhandprintbat.htm
http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/crafts/animals/handprint-ba...

The parents could also help the kids decorate craft-stick photo frames for the photos (have halloween stickers handy for the decorating)

have fun!

Check out a couple of my tried and true websites that I always go to for party ideas. The first one is brightideas.com and the second is makingfriends.com
Have a great time and just remember kids that age are much more inclined to free play as opposed to alot of structured activities. Have lots of fun stuff to play with-blocks are always a huge hit as is playdough-if you have lots of supervision.

You can have them decorate cupcakes. You could frost them first and just have them add m&ms, sprinkles, etc. or have them do the frosting and toppings. There are also pull pinatas (kids just pull strings not hit the pinata) and maybe you can find one in a Halloween theme.

YAY that sounds like so much fun and your ideas are already great. I have seen where people fill a little bin with sawdust and let the kids dig through it for "prizes", you could have cookies already made with frosting and they can shake different sprinkles on them. Kids that age LOVE looking for things, so depending on the weather you can hide things outside and use glowsticks with them. You going to have a blast with this, good luck!