Halloween/ Fall Festival Games: Spooky Bowling

Need an awesome idea for your fall festival, Halloween party, harvest fair, or just for around the house? Need another reason to show your kiddos how totally awesome you are?

Thinking outside the box is always good... especially when it comes to anything kid-related. Unless you're a fan of "I'm bored", "This is bor-ing!", or any variation thereof...

And boring is especially no good when it comes to other people's kids...you know, the ones who don't have to act interested in your wacky ideas that you promise will be fun, especially if they just wait three hours for the crayons to melt. Nobody wants to host the fall festival game that none of the kiddos are interested in playing. Anyone else have nightmares about droves of children at the fall festival, happily playing every game there, except yours? Nah? Just me?

Well, Spooky Bowling is guaranteed not to disappoint. If the line of kids at our Fall Festival was any indication, this game rocks! Don't be fooled by the simplicity....we ran out of prizes, ok?

First of all, you need to go to CVS, Dollar Tree, or somewhere else you can buy these Luxury Wafers in a can. They come in chocolate and vanilla flavors for only $1 per can. (Please don't buy them from Amazon- they are way cheaper at the store!). You will need 10 cans. Darn! Must eat cookies!

You will also need some orange and black paper, glue/ glue gun, Halloween themed stickers, and a ball. We tried a variety of balls, from tennis balls, to Sky balls to the cheap 79 cent big rubber bouncy ball. This is one instance where cheap is better.

Step 1: Eat the cookies! Discard the top and wrappers.
Step 2: Cut your paper to fit around the can.
Step 3: Glue the paper to the cans. I used a glue gun. You choose!
Step 4: Decorate the cans with stickers. Don't you just love the candy corn stickers??
Step 5: Arrange the cans on a level surface in a pyramid shape. (Our surface was paved, so we used chalk to make little Xs so we could easily set the cans back up)
Step 6: This step is totally optional, but will make your game even cooler! Cover your ball (or a variety of balls) with Candy Corn or Spider Duck Tape. If you want to use ghosts or pumpkins, that's okay too! We just tore small strips of tape and covered the balls.

Have you ever seen anything cuter than a Candy Corn ball???

Step 7: Decide how you will award prizes. If you're playing at home, you can skip this step.

• My original plan (which would work well for a family game, classroom, or other setting with a relatively small number of kids) was to place a small prize into each can and the kiddos earned the prize that was in each can then knocked over. You knock over 7 cans, you win 7 prizes. 
• Since we had so many kiddos at our festival, we decided to be a little more moderate. We made a sign indicating 1-3 pins = 1 prize, 4-7 pins = 2 prizes, 8-10 pins = 3 prizes. 
• After the game was such a hit, we moved to Plan C: "Yay! You knocked down ___ pins! Here's your (1) prize!"

Step 8: Mark off lines for different age kids to stand behind as they bowl. If your kiddos will be all relatively the same age, you can skip this step.

Get ready to have some bowl-a-rific fun!

Need another Halloween game? Try Halloween Luck!


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