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Celebrate Autumn and Halloween with a Pumpkin Party for Preschoolers
By Penny Warner

Get your preschooler all excited for autumn and Halloween with a pumpkin party. It’s a great way to introduce Halloween to young children without scaring them for life, so that they shutter every time a ghoulish trick-or-treater comes to the door. Here’s how.

Set up a Pumpkin Patch

Buy or rent hay bales from the feed store and arrange them into a maze in the backyard. Hide small pumpkins under loose hay at the end of the maze. Cut out crows from black construction paper and tape them to the fence and trees. Draw funny jack o’ lantern faces on orange helium balloons and tie them to the hay.

Play in the Pumpkin Patch

Try some of these games for some more fun with preschoolers:

1. Walk the Maze. Let the kids try to find their way through the hay maze to the pumpkins hidden at the other end.

2. Paint a Pumpkin. When they find their pumpkins, let the kids paint them with poster paint or decorate them with stickers.

3. Pumpkin Bowling. Set out plastic 2-liter bottles in a row. Use your balloons to inflate and tie orange helium balloons to the tops of each bottle. Give the kids a small round pumpkin without the stem and let them “bowl” down the pins.

4. Catch the Runaway Pumpkins. Blow up a bunch of orange balloons and tie ribbons to them so they’re barely within reach of the kids’ hands when they float on the ceiling. Then let the kids try to jump up and catch as many balloons as they can.

5. Dress the Scarecrow. Lay out some old clothes, such as overalls, a flannel shirt and a straw hat and work together to build a funny scarecrow. Draw a face on an orange helium balloon to use for the head. 

Pumpkin Patch Refreshments

Serve Pumpkin Punch (orange juice punch) and mini pumpkin pies. Let the kids decorate their own pumpkin-shaped cookies with tubes of frosting and sprinkles.

Penny Warner has more than 25 years of experience as an author and party planner. She has published more than 50 books.