Halloween Party Games You Can Print at Home

Halloween at home gets loud fast. Once the costumes are on and the candy bowl is out, kids have energy to burn and about four minutes of patience for anything that looks like sitting still. Over the years I’ve built up a handful of games that run on nothing more than a printer and a few pages from the site. They work for a party with friends over, or for a Saturday afternoon in October when everyone’s bouncing off the walls. Here are the ones that actually get played in our house.

Before the party: what to print

Most of these games start the same way, with a small stack of pages from the Halloween coloring pages collection. A few tips before you hit print:

• Print a couple of extras. Somebody will rip one, and somebody will want a second go.
• Use thicker paper for anything you’ll cut into cards. Regular copy paper curls and tears, while light cardstock survives a whole evening of grabby hands. There’s more on paper in my guide to printing coloring pages.
• Mix the difficulty levels. Little ones need big simple pumpkins, and older kids get bored fast without some detail. I explain how I match pages to each child in choosing the right coloring page.

1. The not-so-spooky coloring contest

This is the easiest one to set up and it never fails. Everyone picks a page, you set a timer (twenty minutes is about right), and when time’s up the grown-ups judge. The trick is having enough award categories that every child wins something: silliest colors, best use of purple, sparkliest ghost, bravest pumpkin. Write the awards on scraps of paper beforehand so it feels official.

MoMo’s tip: “Always give an award for the wildest colors. A green pumpkin with pink stripes? That’s a winner in my book.”

2. Halloween memory match

Print two copies of a few simple Halloween pages, have the kids color each pair to match, then cut them into cards once they’re dry. Glue them onto thin cardboard if you want them to last beyond one night. Shuffle, lay them face down, and play a classic game of memory. Kids get to color the game before they play it, so it stretches into a good hour of quiet before the noisy part starts.

For younger kids, stick to six or eight pairs. Older ones can handle twenty and will still beat you.

3. Pin the nose on the pumpkin

A Halloween spin on the old party game. Print one big jack-o’-lantern page, color it together, and tape it to a wall or door at kid height. Cut out little paper noses (triangles work well), put a bit of tape on the back of each one, and take turns wearing a blindfold. Write each child’s name on their nose so there’s no arguing about who got closest. There will still be arguing, just less of it.

4. Spooky scavenger hunt

Color a few small Halloween pages, cut out the pictures, and hide them around the house: a bat behind the couch, a ghost in the bathroom, a black cat under a pillow, a witch’s hat on the bookshelf. Give each child a checklist of what to find. For little ones, draw the checklist as pictures so they can play without reading. For older kids, turn each item into a riddle and watch them tear the living room apart.

5. Musical coloring

Like musical chairs, minus the chairs and the tears. Each child starts coloring a page while music plays. When the music stops, everyone passes their page to the left and carries on with whatever lands in front of them. By the end, every page has been colored by the whole group, and the results are usually hilarious. It’s also a gentle way to get kids who don’t know each other working together.

6. Monster story cards

Color and cut out a handful of Halloween characters, friendly monsters, a witch, a pumpkin, a ghost, and put them face down in a pile. Each child draws a card and adds a sentence to a story that has to include that character. It’s a nice wind-down game for the end of the party, when everyone’s full of candy and a bit tired. The stories get very strange, very quickly.

Keeping it fun for little ones

Halloween can tip into too much for younger kids, between the masks and the dark. A few things help. Keep the pages on the cute side, with smiling pumpkins and friendly ghosts. Let the youngest ones play with a grown-up helper, and set up a quiet corner with a basket of crayons for anyone who needs a break. Scissors are a job for adults at this age, so do the cutting ahead of time.

After the party

The colored pages make good decorations, so tape the winners to the window or string them up as a garland. If your kids catch the Halloween bug and want more, there are plenty of ideas in my guide to screen-free activities, and my seasonal coloring guide covers the rest of the year once October’s over.

Happy Halloween from our house to yours. If there’s a Halloween page your kids want that I haven’t drawn yet, tell me through the contact page, or go straight to the Halloween collection and start printing.

Written by Martin, founder of Coloring.photos and dad of three.