• Halloween is fun for all ages, but young people get a particular kick out of it. Kids love the prospect of dressing up in costume and trick-or-treating, while neighborhood Halloween parties help keep them out of trouble after the door-to-door part of the festivities. Assemble a number of games and activities for Halloween youth parties using nothing more than a few props and some ingenuity.
  
  

Halloween Scavenger Hunt

• A Halloween scavenger hunt incorporates items with an autumnal or Halloween theme. Each child receives a list of items you have hidden in a given house or outside in the yard. They then need to find as many of the objects as they can within a specified amount of time. If you like, set the hunt in a park or public woodland, and limit the list to naturalistic items such as fall-colored leaves or acorns. (If you do this, hold the hunt in daylight hours.) Other Halloween scavenger hunt items can include bags of candy, miniature pumpkins (available at any grocery store), plastic zombies and model skeletons with detachable bones that you can scatter around the area.
  
  

Are You a Werewolf?

• Are You a Werewolf? is a variant on the cult card game Mafia. You can play this game with an ordinary deck of cards if you wish. Gather a group of eight to 15 players, and separate a number of cards from the deck equal to the number of players. (Include two jacks and a queen, with the rest of the deck consisting of number cards.) Shuffle them and hand them out to the players, instructing them not to reveal their cards. The players with the jacks are werewolves, and the player with the queen is a supernatural seer. The other players are villagers. Have the players sit in a circle and close their eyes. It is now "night." Tell the two werewolf characters to open their eyes and silently agree upon another player to kill. Tap that player on the shoulder and have him give a bloodcurdling shriek; he's now out of the game. Then instruct the werewolf players to close their eyes and tell the seer to open hers. She must silently select one other player who she believes to be a werewolf. If she's right, give her a thumbs up; otherwise, give her a thumbs down. She must then close her eyes, and the night period ends. Everyone then opens their eyes. If the seer successfully picks a werewolf, that player is now out of the game. The remaining players must then pick someone in the group to "lynch"; a majority vote determines whom. That player is now out of the game. The players then close their eyes again, and another "night" takes place. Play continues in this manner until all of the werewolves are out of the game (in which case the surviving villagers win), equal numbers of werewolves and villagers remain (in which case the surviving werewolves win) or the seer successfully picks the last werewolf (in which case she wins).
  
  

Pumpkin Balance

• Hold the pumpkin balance outdoors, where you can easily clean up messes. Players line up at a starting point, balancing a pumpkin on their heads. When you shout "Go!" they ace toward the finish line as quickly as they can, without letting the pumpkin on their head slip. They can't use their hands to steady the pumpkins, nor can they push or jostle anyone else. The first one to the finish line (or the last one to lose his pumpkin if no one else makes it that far) wins the race.