Fall Festival ideas needed

[dancingelf]

I am Director of Children's Ministries at our church and I need to pick your creative brains. I have scheduled a Fall Festival for late October - it's our Second Annual. The children of our church, as well as the children of the community who joined us at our VBS this summer, are invited. These are the activities we had last year: face painting, pumpkin painting (the little pumpkin shaped gourds), caramel apple making, a fall themed tic-tac-toe game, cupcake decorating, and a hay ride. Does anyone have other activities in mind that I can add to the schedule? We are starting at 4pm, but on Sunday the 24th, so I can't keep people there too long with it being a school night. Otherwise, a bonfire with wiener roast would be perfect.
We are not a church who bans Halloween, but we don't use anything blatantly Halloween in the event. It's simply a "Fall Festival", so while pumpkins and scarecrows might be around, you'll not see ghosts or vampires.
Any and all ideas are appreciated!

 

[Pam Spaur]

Adrienne, we have a fall family fun night at our church, too. We have had bouncy houses, cake walks, all the things that you have mentioned, and even a craft for the adults. (I know, because I was in charge of it!) There were games like ring toss. Picture taking. Bean bag toss. Didn't cost anyone coming a dime. It was all for free, as a love ministry from our church to everyone. The children could dress in costume as long as it wasn't a ghost or witch or anything too dark or icky. Teens helped 'man' the games. I think one year, they even played musical chairs. Everyone had a lovely time!

 

[MrsSoup]

Sounds like so much fun! I'm thinking of trying to have a "Fall" festival for our FRG group and it will need to be extremely low cost so i'm going to steal some of these ideas as well!

There's a spin-off of bobbing for apples so the kids don't spread their germs, you tie little chocolate donuts to sticks and dangle them in front of a blindfolded child and they have to try to bite it or something like that. I've seen it done once or twice. They seem to enjoy it anyway. You could use marshmallows instead of donuts.

 

[Pam Spaur]

Cute ideas, Jess. May I share them with the lady in charge at our church?

 

[MrsSoup]

Of course!

 

[Kim Loves Snow]

Since you don't want to do a bonfire and keep folks late into the evening could you still toast marshmellows or roast hot dogs over a fire made in one of those metal, portable fire pits?

Another suggestions is to see if the older youth at the church would like to put together a maze either out of hay bales or fabric or something else. Young kids love the maze and older kids usually enjoy putting them together.

You could also do a hay scramble. This is best for young kids - hide easter type eggs (they do come in fall colors) and the kids can hunt for an egg that has a small piece of candy, sticker, bible verse, etc.

Good luck!

 

[JeniferDwn]

my daughter always goes straight for the hula hoops that are always at festivals. She can out hula hoop anybody and that's what we spend the whole time doing. Sometimes there are contests, but usually they're just in a stack for anyone to pick up.

 

[ChristmasRose]

Well, I typed a not-so-long message, and when I tried to submit it, it said I wasn't logged in!! How ridiculous! If I'm typing a message, I'm logged in!

Anyway, I'll try to do it again. Would you be interested in a fall crafts bazaar? It's the season. Or a quilt auction, or a raffle, though I realize that some churches may see that as gambling. Maybe they could use fall leaves, branches, pinecones, acorns, dried grasses, etc., to decorate spaces in the church. Or decorate church bulletin boards with construction paper or calico leaves (with supervision, of course). Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, I was responsible for decorating the Officers' Wives' Club bulletin board in an Officers' Club. For fall, I bonded several fall-colored pieces of calico together, cut out a ton of leaves, and used them to make a border for the bulletin board. I was very pleased with the results. Sounds like fun -- good luck!

 

[Kim Loves Snow]

my daughter always goes straight for the hula hoops that are always at festivals. She can out hula hoop anybody and that's what we spend the whole time doing. Sometimes there are contests, but usually they're just in a stack for anyone to pick up.

Great point, JeniferDwn! Hula hoops are always huge. Add a bubble machine and some fun music and you have a great child magnet!

 

[Minta]

How about bobbing for apples, sack races, pumpkin bowling (using a small pumpkin instead of a bowlingball), make bird feeders (pine cones, peanutbutter and bird seeds), 3 legged race and wheel barrel races.

 

[Nutcracker]

We do a fall carnival at church too! One thing we do that is kinda free is that we take pictures of the kids in their costumes (digital) and e-mail them to their parents. We write down their e-mail address have them hold that up and take a picture then take one without the e-mail address. The parents (especially ones who forgot their cameras love it) We have in the past printed out on card stock a cute frame border that a 4X6 picture would fit into, but that can get costly if in color but a B&W border wouldn't be too bad. We also have a game to guess the weight of a giant pumpkin (sometimes the grocery store or farmer's market will donate, some years we have to buy it) We also have squirt guns and jackolanterns. We light the pumpkins and the kids have to use the squirt gun to put out the candle through the carving. We also ask the Adult Sunday School classes to do a trunk or treat. The classes decorate their trunks for tailgates and hand out candy. Some even come up with games for the kids to play. If they don't want to do a trunk we ask that they donate candy. Another cheap one is a borrowed kiddie pool and rubber ducks from the $1 store. Put a number on the bottom of each duck and the kids can "pick" one. They get the number of pieces of candy that relate to the number on the duck. Even the babies like this one. We have had in the past someone who brought their horses to the church to allow the kids to ride. What a line that was. Last we have a costume contest for the best costume in different age catagories. Mr. Monopoly won overall this past year. He was too cute! We do ours from 3-5pm so the kids can get home early. Hope this helps!

 

[Nutcracker]

I forgot. We also do "GLOW" God Lights Our Way! and we talk about that and hand out the pumpkin prayer too! I am ashamed to have forgot the most important part. We do this with the costume contest as most kids crowd around for that.

 

[pixiestick]

You could have a big pile of hay or leaves and hide something in it to find like pumpkin erasers or such... Like a needle in a haystack...

Or a hay bale maze