A Creepy Halloween Party for Your Dolls and You

A nostalgic little Halloween invitation for your doll party. Print and send
these to all your friends and their dolls. Don't forget to fill out the date,
time and location of your spooky party!

       Turn the lights low; pile more logs on the open fire, and then play some of these games on Halloween. They will make one quite sure that there are fairies, and gnomes, and elves, and all the rest of the delightful little folk that live, usually, only between the covers of the picture books.

A Jack-O-Lantern Game. From our printable below, print ever so many of the quaint little pumpkins on orange construction paper and then cut them out, neatly, coloring their round eyes, noses, smiling mouths. Write down a number on the back of each jack-o-lantern, ten for the most frightening, five each for the friendly faces and one for just a plain uncarved pumpkin, and so on until each little squash has a number. Then hide the pumpkins in out-of-the-way corners of the room, behind the curtains, inside books, peeping out from the backs of pictures and beneath the rugs. The children who are going to play the game must stay out of the room while the pumpkins are being hidden, but, at a given signal, they return and begin a merry hunt for the paper pumpkins to see who can find the greatest number in fifteen minutes. After the pumpkins have been collected, each child counts up the numbers on the back of his pumpkin to see who has the highest score. There should be a nice prize for the winner!

The Game of Tinker Bell. She was the strange little fairy, you know, in the story of Peter Pan, whom one never saw, but only heard, because her voice was a tiny, tinkling bell. To play this fairy game, all the children, except two, join hands and make a ring in the center of the room. If it is a party, it will be much more fun to have these two children dressed in costume, one with wings upon her shoulders like a fairy and the other in a Peter Pan cap. Peter and the fairy stand in the center of the circle, the fairy wearing a tiny bell hung from her wrist by a ribbon, and which she rings from time to time. Peter's eyes are blindfolded, and he tries to catch the fairy by following the sound of the bell. As he almost reaches Tinker Bell, she moves softly away, and the children move also, but very softly too, on their tiptoes. If Peter does succeed in catching the fairy he gives his cap to some other child to wear, who is, in his turn, blindfolded and tries to catch Tinker Bell.

The Fairy Gifts. Every one knows that Halloween is the night when the fairies give good gifts to little children. One may choose one's own gifts when playing this game.

       Draw or paint a big yellow crescent moon on a white sheet and all about it draw many little yellow stars. Upon the moon, and in the center of each star, paste little white papers, with the name of a good gift written plainly on it. These gifts may be anything that a child would like very much; a set of dolls' dishes, a drum, a party, happiness, a new book, a sunshiny day, all these and many more gifts are written down. Each child is blindfolded, turned about two or three times, and then told to walk up to the sheet and pick out a gift. Perhaps he will not be able to touch any gift at all. Perhaps a boy will select a doll for his gift and a girl a drum‚ that is the fun of the game, but before the time is up some delightful gifts will have been touched which the children can write down on slips of paper and count up, afterward, to see who is to be the happiest and the richest during the year.

Secrets. This is a mystery game that will furnish ever so much fun as the children sit around the open fire on Halloween. One child leaves the room while the others decide upon some object or character connected with the eve. Then the child returns and says to each of the others in turn:

"What is your secret like?"

Perhaps a Jack-o-Lantern was chosen, and the answers are:

• "It is round."
• "It has large eyes."
• "It grows in the garden."
• "It is orange," and then the child is able to guess what it is.

If an elf was decided upon, the answers may be like these:

• "It is tiny."
• "It lives in story books."
• "It is fond of playing tricks."
• "It wears pointed shoes," and after awhile the child finds out.

The Witch. To play this game, one child is chosen to play the part of the witch and she may wear a red cloak, a pointed cardboard hat, and have a toy black cat sitting upon her shoulder. In one hand she carries a little broom and she is blindfolded. The other children form a circle around the witch and dance about her, chanting: 

"On Halloween,

We all believe,
A witch rides over the trees,
On a broomstick steed,
She's a sight indeed,
And she catches each child
she sees."

       At the end of the jingle, the children stand still and the witch points her broom at one child, who

must catch hold of it.

       "Who are you?" asks the witch.

       In reply the child who holds the broom disguises his voice and crows like a rooster, gobbles like a turkey, peeps like a chick, or makes any other animal or bird sound. If the witch is able to recognize the child's voice and tell his name the child has to pay some funny forfeit.

Printable sheet of pumkins for A Jack-O-Lantern Game described above.
Print pumpkins directly onto orange construction paper before cutting them out.

More Halloween fun with dolls:

• American Girl Doll Halloween Party with a Werewolf!
• The Haunting Halloween Party - Dolloween Special
• An American Girl Halloween
• Trick or Treat?
• An American Girl Halloween