Party Ideas

My college roommate and I created a Halloween scene for our dorm that might work for your little one's party: we turned a hallway into a scary forest. A roll of brown butcher paper, a box of cheap black trash bags, some fishing line, and fake cobwebs was all it took. Line strips of the butcher paper vertically to make "trees" (if you have a column somewhere you can use - even better!), twist butcher paper tightly to make branches and suspend them from the ceiling w/ fishing line (it's lightweight, so tape should work). Use the trashbags to cover the wall space between the trees, and hang the cobweb from your trees and the walls. Voila! A scary and inexpensive forest (better if you turn off the light and have an electric jack-o-lantern or very dim flashlight for the kids! Our dorm was open for kids to trick-or-treat, and it was a great hit w/ the kids.

Have fun with your party!

one of the coolest parties i have ever been to when i was young. my friends mom set up a couple of stunts any of which you can try. of course the classic bobbing for apples and candy lost in hay bells. little baggies of tons of glitter as fairy dust. you can get creative. and if hes six they shouldnt be too jouvenile for him. fishing for candy over a sheet. the coolest feature though was a maze of boxes. im not really sure how they set it up. the boxes have to be taller than the kids heads, and supported in such a way they create a maze. a small maze. they walk through to the end where theres a huge cauldron of candy and someone sitting behind it asleep, costumed ofcourse. as they nervously reach forward the moster comes alive and scares the wits out of them. it was really cool. hope you get some ideas.
M.

We have done this for years. We have 6 families with a total of 11 kids. Each year a different family will host the Halloween party. We try to eat at 5:00. We working parents just plan to get off early each Halloween.

We usually order pizzas. We ask the pizza place to cut the pizzas into double slices so that they are small enough that the kids do not waste the pizza. One person brings a huge salad, another will bring a veggie plate. (we laugh because, we discovered our kids love red peppers!). When the kids were really little we did juice boxes, now we have lemonade.
One person will bring cookies. By the way, the parents do have beer and wine.

When the kids first arrive we take photos of each child and then at some point attempt to do a group shot.

We do not really have activities, because the kids are so excited. One year we found a Halloween pinata and filled it with packaged gummy fruit.

We make sure everyone goes to the potty and then we remind the kids about the rules. Stay together, no running, one person rings the bell or knocks, and each time you say "Trick or Treat Please". As you are given candy you say "thank you". No eating treats while trick or treating!

We usually all just go home once we feel the kids have had enough. It gets a little later year after year. Some kids are done earlier than others so they go on home.

We have a blast, mostly because we are all together. Over the years we have loved just seeing the kids in the costumes and seeing what they choose to wear.

I remember a Halloween party when I was 5. My mom and her friends got all the kids together and started with a ghost story. If I recall correctly, the story was about walking through a haunted house, the things found/seen in each room. And they had prepared props to go with each room's story which they passed around to us kids to feel... I definitely remember the bowl of eyeballs (peeled grapes), bowl of brains (noodles cooked in red food coloring, then strained and allowed to cool in a bowl so it had a rounded shape), and the "leg bone". My mom told me years later it was a cow's bone that they got from the butcher. There were 10-12 props but I can't remember them all.

Have fun with it!

One fun, but very messy, idea is dining in the dark. Use blindfolds/eye covers to cut off the sight of your little ghouls, etc. Then place in front of them a selection of small finger foods. You can even give them scary names (spaghetti becomes worms, grapes to eyeballs, etc.) For six-year-olds, this may be best done on a plastice tablecloth on the floor.

Spooky music, household noises, and even laughter become a little scarier when you can't see what's happening.

Don't forget dirt cake for dessert! Instead of writing your little darling's name on the cake, it can be written on the rim of the flower pot (a more lasting memory, too).

I did a cool cake for a friend of mine's daughter one year. It was basically a spice cake mix (baked) and then crubled into a bowl. Then mix one package of vanilla pudding (made) into it. This makes the dirt. Then add gummy worms into it! Makes a creepy birhtday cake!

We had a great Halloween birthday for my daughter when she was 6. We did it before Halloween though. The kids were able to actually wear their costumes more than once that way and everyone could see them. One of the games we played was wrap the mummy. I bought toilet paper from the dollar store and the kids paired up. One was the wrapper and one got wrapped. It was a race to see who could get their t.p. roll around thier partner the fastest. Alot of fun... We also blacked out the back porch with black ground covering and the scene setters from party city. Those are just a few of the things we did, but maybe some ideas to get you started. Have fun!