Most Halloween game lists assume you own a craft cupboard, a smoke machine, and three free hours. Real life looks different. You have a living room with a sofa in the middle of it, a handful of children who get bored in ten minutes, and a roll of toilet paper that is about to become very important.
The best Halloween games for kids at home are rarely fancy. They are loud, quick, and built from things already in your kitchen drawers and recycling bin. Kids do not care if the ghost is shop bought. They care about who wins the race.
Below you will find 25 games with notes on what to gather, how to play, and how to adjust for little ones or older kids. Some need nothing but a playlist. Others take five minutes of setup. All of them work in a normal UK sized home, even on a wet afternoon in late October.
1. Race to Wrap a Mummy With Toilet Paper
Two minutes of setup turns the living room into a mummy factory.
Split the kids into pairs. One child stands very still as the mummy, and the other gets a single roll of toilet paper and a two minute timer. Wrap the whole body and leave the face clear so nobody has to breathe through paper.
Judge on two things:
- The most covered mummy
- The fewest rips along the way
Hand out one roll per pair, not one per team. A shared roll starts arguments before the timer even begins.
2. Knock Down Mini Pumpkins With a Water Bottle Bowling Set
Bowling suits mixed ages better than almost any other game, because a gentle roll from a four year old knocks bottles over just as well as a hard one from a nine year old.
Draw pumpkin faces on the bottles with a marker, line them up in a triangle, and mark a throwing line with tape about three big steps back. Each child gets two rolls per turn. Count the bottles down, and the highest score after three rounds wins first pick of the sweets.
Go easy on the filling. Too much rice and the bottles refuse to fall.
What to grab first
3. Toss Rings Onto a Paper Witch Hat
A witch hat is just a cone with a brim, which makes it an easy target to build.
Cut the centres out of paper plates to make rings, then set the hat on the floor or a low stool. Each child tosses three rings per turn.
- One point for a ring that lands on the brim
- Three points for a ring that settles over the tip
Little ones can stand close, and older kids can step back one pace each round. Works best with five or six players, so turns stay short.
4. Topple a Ghost Cup Tower With Rolled Socks
One rule keeps this game fair: everyone throws from the same spot.
Stack ten paper cups in a pyramid and draw a ghost face on the front of each with a black marker. Let the kids do the eyes, since the wobbly ones look scarier anyway. Roll socks into tight balls for ammo.
- Each player gets three throws.
- Count how many cups fall.
- Rebuild the tower before the next turn.
Cheap, loud, and nobody needs to be good at it.
💡 Quick Tip
Stand the tower on a tray or a low coffee table. Carpet grips the cups and the crash feels flat, while a tray sends them flying everywhere.
5. Feed the Monster Mouth Box With Bean Bags
The most common mistake here is cutting the mouth too small, then watching kids give up after two misses.
Take a cardboard box and cut a wide mouth in one side, roughly the size of a dinner plate. Glue white paper triangles along the top edge for teeth, then paint or colour the rest of the box green or purple. Rolled socks or small soft toys make safe food for the monster.
Give each child five tosses and let them count their own points. When the box is full, empty it out and start again, which kids find just as fun as winning.
Tape over cut edges so nothing scratches little hands.
Throw soft items only, like socks or small soft toys.
Hard toys or toy cars as monster food.
A box so light it slides away. Put a few books inside to weigh it down.
6. Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin With a Blindfold
Somebody always peeks, and that is half the fun.
Draw a big pumpkin face with eyes and a mouth but no nose. Tape it to the wall at a child’s eye height so the smallest player can reach it too. Give each child a small orange triangle with their name written on the back, so you can see whose nose landed closest when the game ends.
Tape the noseless pumpkin low on a clear wall and mark a starting line three big steps back.
Put a small loop of tape on the back of each nose and write the player’s name on it.
Blindfold one child, give them one gentle spin, and let them walk to the wall.
Once everyone has had a turn, the nose closest to the middle wins.
7. Play Halloween Bingo With Candy Corn Markers
Bingo does not need numbers. Swap them for pictures and a four year old can play right beside a nine year old.
Draw a three by three grid on each card and fill the squares with these shapes, mixed up differently on every card:
- A bat
- A ghost
- A pumpkin
- A spider
- A crescent moon
- A black cat
Call the shapes out of a bowl and let each child cover the matching square with a candy corn. Save the eating for after the winner shouts.
Use pictures instead of numbers or words. Kids who cannot read yet can play on equal terms with the big ones.
8. Guess What Is Inside the Mystery Touch Boxes
A bowl of dry pasta and a bowl of cold spaghetti feel nothing alike, and that is the whole trick.
Cut a hand sized hole in the side of a shoebox, drop in one item, and let each child reach in and guess. Check for food allergies before you start and keep every item nut free. Keep the lid on until it is their turn so nobody sees the surprise early.
| In the box | Kids will say it is |
|---|---|
| Peeled grapes | Eyeballs |
| Cold cooked spaghetti | Worms |
| Dry pasta shells | Monster teeth |
| Cotton wool | Ghost hair |
9. Crawl Through a Yarn Spider Web in the Hallway
One ball of yarn turns a boring hallway into a mission.
Tape strands from wall to wall at different heights and cross them so they form a web. The goal is to get from one end to the other without touching a thread. Leave a low gap near the floor so toddlers can join in, and use low tack masking tape so your paint comes off clean.
An empty hallway that kids run through on the way to somewhere else.
A criss cross web where every child slows down, plans a route, and tries not to wobble.
10. Freeze When the Spooky Playlist Stops
Press play, then stop the music at random.
Freeze dance works because kids learn the rules in five seconds. Build a playlist of spooky songs and sound effects, then pause it whenever you like. The twist is how they freeze, so call out a new cue each round and watch the living room fill with statues.
- ▸Ghost: freeze with both arms floating up
- ▸Zombie: freeze mid shuffle with stiff arms
- ▸Bat: freeze with arms tucked in like wings
- ▸Witch: freeze on one leg like you are on a broom
- ▸Spider: freeze on all fours without moving a leg
11. Hunt for Hidden Skeleton Bones Around the Room
The payoff comes at the end, when a pile of paper scraps turns into a whole skeleton on the floor.
Cut ten bones out of white paper before the kids arrive: a skull, a ribcage, two arms, two legs, and a few small ones for hands and feet. Hide them around the room at different heights, some in plain sight and some tucked behind cushions. Split the kids into teams and send them off with a two minute timer.
When all the bones are found, each team lays out a skeleton on the floor. Most correct bones in the right spot wins.
12. Find Plastic Eggs in a Living Room Pumpkin Patch
Orange cushions, a few cardboard pumpkins, and a green blanket for grass are all it takes to build a patch indoors.
Tuck plastic eggs among the cushions and under the blanket. Each egg holds a small prize, so every find feels like a win and nobody goes home empty handed.
Give each child a basket and a rule that only two eggs can be found before they have to wait for the others to catch up. It keeps the quick finders from clearing the whole patch in thirty seconds.
Easy things to hide inside the eggs
13. Act Out Halloween Charades With Picture Cards
Plenty of parents skip charades because they think younger kids cannot read the cards. Picture cards fix that.
Draw one simple image on each card: a bat, a witch on a broom, a mummy, a pumpkin, a vampire, a spooky cat. Players pick a card and act it out without a single word while the others guess.
Two small rules keep things moving. Cap each turn at one minute, and let the guesser take the next turn.
Use pictures, not words, so every child can join in.
Let little ones act with a partner for support.
Cards that are too hard, like a “headless horseman.”
Long turns that leave other kids waiting and restless.
14. Play Ghost in the Graveyard Indoors
The usual mistake is turning every light off and hoping for the best.
Dim the lights instead and leave a lamp on in the hallway. One child is the ghost and hides somewhere in the house while the others count to fifty at the base, then creep off to search. The first one to find the ghost whispers “ghost,” and everyone races back to base. The ghost tags as many as possible on the way.
Pick one or two rooms as the playing area and shut the other doors.
⚠️ Watch Out
Clear the floor of toys, shoes, and anything slippery before the lights go down. Close the stair gate or door too, since the best hiding spots are rarely the safest.
15. Keep a Balloon Ghost Off the Floor
Blow up a white balloon, draw two eyes and a wobbly mouth, and you have a ghost that floats just slowly enough for small hands to catch.
The only rule is that the ghost cannot touch the ground. Kids tap it up with a hand, an elbow, or a flat paper plate if you want a bigger challenge. It takes about thirty seconds to get everyone laughing, and it burns off plenty of energy before bedtime.
Keep a spare balloon or two nearby. One always pops.
16. Balance an Eyeball Ping Pong Ball on a Spoon
A ping pong ball and a spoon are all you need, though a black marker makes the ball a lot scarier.
Draw a big pupil and a few red veins on each ball so it looks like a wide open eyeball. Line the kids up at one end of the room with a spoon each, and mark a finish line at the other end with tape.
If a ball drops, the player picks it up and carries on from where it fell. No restarts, so nobody gets stuck at the start line. Toddlers can use a bigger spoon and a plastic egg instead.
Draw a pupil and red veins on each ping pong ball with markers.
Stick a tape start line and a finish line at opposite ends of the room.
Players hold the spoon in one hand and keep the other hand behind their back.
Walk, never run. First eyeball to cross the finish line wins.
17. Fill in a Spooky Story Mad Libs Together
Silly words do most of the work here.
Write a short story about a haunted house, a lost cat, or a very confused vampire, and leave blanks where the key words should go. Under each blank, write what kind of word is needed. The kids shout out answers without knowing the story, then you read the finished version out loud.
Ask for words like these:
- An animal
- A smelly food
- A funny sound
- A body part
- A scary place
Read slowly and keep a straight face. It gets funnier every time.
Do not show the story first. The surprise of hearing the wrong words in the wrong places is the whole joke.
18. Claim a Seat in Musical Pumpkins
Musical chairs has one flaw: the first child out sits and watches for ten minutes.
Swap the chairs for paper pumpkins taped to the floor, then play spooky music while the kids walk around the circle. When the music stops, everyone has to stand on a pumpkin. Remove one pumpkin each round, but nobody leaves the game. Kids have to share and squeeze together instead, so the circle gets sillier as it shrinks.
- ▸Cut pumpkins from orange paper, one for every child to start
- ▸Tape them down on every side so nobody slips
- ▸Take away one pumpkin per round, and everyone stays in
- ▸The last pumpkin holds the whole group, if they can fit
19. Build a Bat Cave Obstacle Course With Tape
Masking tape does the heavy lifting.
Mark a path through the living room and add a few stops along the way. A blanket draped over two chairs makes a cave tunnel, a tape line on the floor becomes a tightrope, and a row of cushions turns into boulders to hop over. The kids race through one at a time while you time them with a phone.
Keep everyone in bare feet or grippy socks on hard floors, since plain socks slide on laminate.
🦇 The Bat Cave Course
Start: line up at the cave entrance
Tunnel: crawl under the blanket
Tightrope: walk the tape line heel to toe
Boulders: hop over the cushions
Finish: ring a bell or tap the wall
20. Draw and Guess in Halloween Pictionary
Drawing under pressure is where the laughs come from.
Write Halloween words on slips of paper and drop them into a bowl. Teams of two take turns, with one child drawing and the other guessing. A forty five second timer keeps things quick. No letters, numbers, or talking allowed, and the drawer can only point at the picture.
Kids who are not drawing can shout guesses from the sidelines, which usually gets loud.
📌 Good To Know
Sort the word slips into two bowls. Easy words like pumpkin, ghost, and bat go to the little ones, and trickier ones like haunted house or cauldron go to the older kids.
21. Guess How Many Candy Corns Are in the Jar
Fill a clear jar to the brim and let the kids do the hard thinking.
Each child writes a guess on a slip of paper with their name on it, then drops it into a pumpkin bucket. Let them walk around the jar and look from every side before they decide. Count the candy corns out loud together at the end, which turns the counting into a game of its own.
The closest guess wins the jar. Keep the lid screwed on tight until then, since small hands will try to test the answer.
22. Match Pumpkin Faces in a Memory Game
Most memory games rely on pairs of identical pictures. This one works because no two pumpkin faces look quite the same.
Cut orange paper into twenty small circles and draw ten different faces, two of each: a grin, a gap toothed smile, a surprised mouth, and so on. Mix them face down on the floor or table.
- Players take turns flipping two cards.
- A match means they keep the pair and go again.
- A miss means both cards go back face down.
The player with the most pairs at the end wins.
Cut twenty orange circles and draw ten different faces, two of each.
Shuffle them and lay them face down in rows on a clear patch of floor.
Take turns flipping two cards. Keep any pair you match and play again.
Count your pairs when the last card is gone. Most pairs wins.
23. Make Shadow Monsters With a Torch and a Sheet
Hang a white sheet across a doorway, switch off the room lights, and put a torch on the floor behind it.
Kids stand between the torch and the sheet and make monster shapes with their hands, arms, and whole bodies. The audience on the other side guesses what each shadow is meant to be. A wolf, a bat, a big hairy spider, or a giant with a very long nose all work.
Move the torch closer to make the shadows huge, or farther away to shrink them.
Use a plain white or light sheet so the shadows show clearly.
Keep the torch low and steady, on a stool or a pile of books.
Candles or any open flame as the light source.
Shining the torch into anyone’s eyes.
24. Hop Through a Spooky Hopscotch Trail
Chalk is the classic tool, but tape does the same job indoors and peels up without a trace.
Stick ten squares to the floor in a winding line, then number them or draw a symbol in each one. A bat, a ghost, and a moon work well because kids can follow the pictures even if they cannot read numbers yet. Players toss a bean bag, hop to the square, and hop back.
The rules can flex a lot depending on who is playing, so adjust them as the kids get bolder.
| Younger kids | Older kids |
|---|---|
| Two footed jumps are fine | Hop on one foot only |
| Bigger squares, five in a row | Smaller squares, ten in a winding path |
| Follow the pictures | Hop in number order, skipping the bean bag square |
25. Roll the Trick or Treat Dice to End the Night
Finish with a game that gets the kids sitting down, which is useful when bedtime is close.
Make one big die from a square tissue box covered in paper, or use a regular die with a key written on a piece of paper. Each number means something different, and the kids take turns rolling. Decide the outcomes before you start so there are no arguments halfway through.
Sit in a circle on the floor, pass round a bowl of sweets, and let the dice decide who gets what.
Conclusion
You do not need a big budget or a house full of decorations to run good Halloween games for kids. A roll of toilet paper, a stack of paper cups, and a torch can fill a whole afternoon.
Pick three or four games that suit the ages in your house. Set the supplies out before the kids arrive, then let the noise take over. Some games will flop within a minute, and some will become the story everyone retells next October. Both outcomes are normal.
What matters is a living room full of laughing kids and a bowl of sweets waiting at the end.