Halloween worksheets  Halloween cards  Halloween printables  Halloween coloring pages

On October 31st, Halloween, we held the 8th annual Mark's English School Halloween Party!  This year's theme, not that each year has a theme, but this year's theme was a medieval theme with a dungeon and royal family + court jester.  There were 67 or so children and maybe 45 or more adults that came to the party this year.

My son and I started setting up the hall at around 8:00.  We had 7 volunteers come help from early in the morning to get the community center ready for 1:30.  Here are a few pictures of the place all set up before the party.

Reception began just before 1:30 and we had a little place set up for kids to get Halloween tattoos.

I made a picture area with a coffin for people to take some Halloween pictures.  We didn't get pictures of everyone but we got a lot.  Check out all the great costumes! Click on the previews for better pictures, cropped for the full effect.

To start the party we had 2 group games.  The first was for elementary school children and older.  It was "the Mummy Wrap" game.  Children got into pairs and with a roll of toilet paper, raced to make a mummy out of one of the pair.  The first group to finish was the winner!

We actually had two groups finish at about the same time, so we declared them both the winners.  Some of the students kept working after the buzzer and I felt the need to award one more group for best mummy.  Here are our winners below.

The second game was for kindergarten and lower children.  We played a game that's a bit like musical chairs.  We laid out 14 cushions on the ground, each with a Halloween flashcard under the cushion.  While the music played the kids walked around.  When the music stopped, the kids sat down.  From another set of flashcards, we drew one or two cards.  We called out the cards, "ghost" and "skeleton" for example and those that were sitting on a cushion with a ghost or skeleton under them were out.  They brought their cushion and card to the front and got some stickers as a consolation prize. The final winners got a Halloween snow globe as a prize (plus stickers.) Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the game.

This year because of the new flu, we canceled the bobbing for apples game.  Instead we had a Halloween quiz and those that could last through 3 rounds of questions, got apples as a reward.

Next came the main event: the Halloween carnival!

We had a few stations set up with games, crafts and prizes.  There was a Halloween bingo spot:

A craft table where students could make a Halloween character stick puppet and a table with make-up pencils so students could add to their costumes or just draw something on their cheeks or hands.

This year we brought back the Bone Collector game.  Students battle each other one-on-one to collect the most bone cards.  The winner got some Pop-Rocks!

One of the new games this year was the Eyeball Coffin Lid game.  I made some coffin lids and carved out a skull into the lid.  At the bottom of the lid, kids put two (ping-pong ball) eyeballs and then had to roll them down the board and into the skull's eye sockets.  Those that did it, without dropping the ball, got an assortment of eyeball candies.

Another new game for this year, the Stocks Toss.  I made 3 sets of stocks and had some small skulls for the kids to throw.  The kids put on the stocks and had 3 chances to throw the small skulls into a skull-bucket.  If they couldn't get any of them in, they had to sit in the dungeon with the skeletons and spiders!

The last new game for this year was the Free the Spirits Game. There were some spirits trapped in the bubbles.  Kids had to free all the spirits (pop all the bubbles) in 30 seconds and they would win.  If the spirits weren't freed (the bubbles hit the floor,) the kids lost.  This game was a big success.  We expect to see this one come back again.

Once the Halloween carnival was done, it was snack time.  Tomoko with some help, made close to a thousand cookies, eyeballs and other treats.

Here's a shot of the cookies back at the cookie factory (our house)

And then put out on the trays at the party.

As we were snacking, I announced the winners of the costume contest.  there were so many great costumes and it was really hard to choose.  Here are the winners for best (2nd place) pair (second place), cutest, pair (first place), scariest, and best (first place.)

The adult prize went to Spiderman who left the party before the winners were announced.

Here's a final group shot of most of the party guests.

Then as the last event we had Trick or Treat.  Our helpers cam up on stage and we each passed out treats to all the kids as they filed past us.  We even had toothbrushes to give out this year, courtesy of Tsuchiya Dental Office :)

The party was a big success thanks to all people who helped out and all of the guests that came dressed in wonderful costumes and big smiles. I'd like to especially thank, in no particular order: Haruo, Kita, Dennis, Tomo, Ayumi, Yumi, Yoshinori and Miho for all their help in setting up and running the party, Moe for her help with the crafts table, Tomoko for her hard work on costumes, Kai for helping with the set preparations, Hosogoya Apple Orchard for donating apples, Tsuchiya Dental Office for donating toothbrushes for the kids, Kai, Leina, and Emma for help with cookies and their little sister, and too all those that stayed and helped clean up afterwards.

I hope you all enjoyed the Halloween party as much as I did.

Happy Halloween!

- Mark

here are a couple pictures of the setting up