Ideas for Planning a Fall Festival
The Un-Halloween Approach to Celebrating the Harvest Season
Who says Christians can't have fun? A Fall Festival offers kids the chance to celebrate something other than Halloween with all the fun and frolic that they can imagine. In fact, a festival is a great family event that will keep your congregation talking for months after. It can include the youngest children to the oldest adults!
Here are some ideas that you might consider when planning your event.
Bible Costume Contests
Let children come to the festival dressed in their best Bible costumes. Hold a judging contest for different age groups for the best Bible costume. Prizes can include donations from local stores and restaurants. Chic-Fil-A is a great place to ask for donations, as they love to help churches when they can.
Cake Walk
This is a popular game that children and adults can play together. Have church members donate home-baked cakes and goodies to set out on a table. Arrange 20 chairs set up 10 back-to-back. Place a number on each chair. Place cards in a bag or hat that have the numbers 1 to 20 written on them. The leader plays music and has the contestants walk around the chairs. When the music ends, everyone finds a chair. The leader pulls out a number from the bag/hat and the person sitting in the chair with the winning number gets to pick a cake from the table to take home.
Pie Judging Contest
Have church members bring in their prize-winning pies! Assign each pie a number and give the baker a card with their number on it, too. Have your minister or an elder of the church be the judge, who goes around and tastes each of the pies. The pies will just have numbers on them, so the judge will not know who brought in which pie. The winning person can receive a prize.
Carnival Style Games
Have church members donate bags of wrapped candies and novelty toys before the event. Plan games for the children to play. Visit Carnival Savers for ideas. They sell products, as well as offer free ideas. Give out two prizes, if the child wins the game, and one candy just for playing. You can have a face painting booth, as well.
Dinner
Everyone loves a free dinner. Have your church serve up some good old fashion hot dogs and chips for dinner! Add some lemonade and cold water, plus some hot coffee, and you've got yourself a feast for a king. Folks just love to come to any church event when free food is offered.
Door Prizes
Have local stores and restaurants donate items, as well as ask church members to donate items to place on tables for all to see. Assign each item a number and make a corresponding bag for each number. Give out raffle tickets throughout the evening for things like winning games, winning a costume contest, etc. Let ticket holders bid on the item that they want most by putting their name on the back of their ticket and the number of the item they want to win. The person manning the table will put that ticket in the corresponding bag with that number. At the end of the evening, draw a ticket out of each bag to see who wins that particular prize. Of course, the winner gets to take the prize home.
Whether you do some or all of the ideas listed above, your Fall Festival will be such a blessing to all families who attend. Consider opening the event to your entire community as safe and fun way to celebrate Fall.
