34 fun ideas for school carnival games
1. The Beauty Salon was a popular booth at our Fall Carnival. The boys and girls loved to dye their hair, blue, green, pink!
2. Karaoke was also very popular this year!
3. About three years ago, our room moms rented an electronic bull. (I can’t think of the right name!) The line never ended! Kids and adults loved it!
4. My children’s school has a kissing booth. They didn’t get real kisses, but instead they gave you a Hershey kiss. They also have a seal on their lips, and they stamp your face with it! And you see TONS of kids running around their carnival with various kisses! Very pretty!
5. We played “Bingo for Books” in the media center.
6. Snack Walk (like a cake walk but kids chose bags of chips, a box of Little Debbies, a bag of cookies, a 2-liter soda bottle, etc.)
7. We also auction off the janitor, principal, and librarian for a day. Those were very popular. (The janitor brought more!)
8. We made Super Twister with dots painted on a large piece of canvas that was taped to the ground and everyone was trying to hit the correct color with the correct body part. Ours is big enough that more than 30 children can play at the same time.
9. A popular game at our school carnival was football toss. Hoops would be hung from the ceiling (starting with hula-hoop sized hoops) and you would try to throw a soccer ball through a hoop. The smaller the ring, the higher the points.
10. Hit the teacher with a wet sponge. Very popular, even among parents.
11. Gum Blowing Contest – Popular because gum is often banned.
12. Advanced Spelling Bee – Allowed students to take steps to the prize board if correct; end of line if lost.
13. Dress Up The Teacher: Visit Garage Sales and Goodwill for outrageous items to dress up a teacher. Relate this to academic standardized test review/problem solving… use a digital camera to photograph the results as a souvenir.
14. A few years ago we had a carnival and one of the big sellers was “Loonie” jars (here in Canada we call our Loonie dollar). We asked families to donate jars full of items, such as packs of gum, small toys. , marbles, pencils, you name it, people filled them. We had over 400 donated. Then people drew a number from a basket and that was the jar they got.
15. We just had our carnival on Thursday and Friday, and I teach third grade. This year we did the toy walk (played the same as the cake walk). We used small, inexpensive toys ($1.00 limit) brought in by the kids and also received some happy meal toys donated by McDonald’s. Another one we did was the Wii game. The kids loved it!!!
16. We do a “Great Pumpkin Obstacle Course” in which the student dresses up as a big pumpkin (we wear my hunting coat, hat, and orange gloves), then they go through tires, hay bales, and weave pumpkins. Kids love it!
17. Last year at our fall festival we had a duck race. You set up a small pool and you get the bathing ducks. You also need water pistols. Students “race” their ducks using the spray from the water guns to make them go. It was really fun!
18. We had a carnival many years ago and the most successful booth was the engraving booth. We ordered necklaces from Oriental Trading and we had one of those handheld engraving machines and we wrote the children’s names on them. It was quick and easy.
19. A father built a Plinko board that travels from one grade to another with his son: it is the most popular item at the fair. We have a stage in our gym for kids to stand on the stage and drop Plinko’s discs.
20. The Fortune Teller position is the most popular.
21. Mystery boxes – boxes with holes that kids put their hands into – had peeled grapes, cold spaghetti, fruit jelly. We gave each one a scary name.
22. Guess the weight of a large pumpkin.
23. We sold plastic gloves filled with popcorn. Each “hand” had a spider ring on the finger.
24. Musical chairs with stuffed animals. Before carnival, collect stuffed animals (kids can donate them in droves). Put them in a pile in the center of the room. Arrange chairs in a circle around the stuffed animals. put numbers under the chairs. Play music for a minute. Have the children sit down. Draw a number. The winner chooses a stuffed animal.
25. What about sand art? Kids love it! You can get supplies online, such as small plastic bottles and bracelets. Use salt dyed with food coloring for the sand.
26. Another idea is to make a box maze in your classroom. It could be a crawl through. Maybe the kids can solve a puzzle along the way.
27. Guessing contests are fun. Decorate clear glass jars and fill with whatever. Lollipops, M&M’s, individually wrapped candies, pretzels, dried beans can add a recipe to make soup, so it looks on the outside of the jar. Here again, have different people bring a decorated jar filled with something and ask them to count and put on a piece of folded paper at the bottom of the jar lid the number of items in the jar. Only one prize per winner and rough relatives can’t win their jar. The more jars, the more winners. Any size jar will work: jelly jars, gallon jars, miracle whip jars, etc. Decorating is fun. Example: A person completely covered the jar with wrapping paper and put 1 bag of candy in the jar, so the correct guess was one. Paste decals. Make a puffed lid on the lid. Glue on lace. Paste a pattern on the inside of the jar and use enamel paint and paint the design on the outside of the jar and maybe outline with permanent fabric paint. The outline isn’t necessary, but it adds a nice extra touch. Don’t forget to delete your pattern when you’re done.
28. Fluky Ball: Set up an easel with a bucket underneath. The child must bounce a ball off the easel into the bucket to win.
29. Tin Pan Alley: A boy rolls a ball down a ramp. At the bottom there is a box with 2 muffin tins painted in 3 different colors. The boy rolls 3 balls. If the 2 colors match, you win.
30. A great carnival idea is to offer a DINO DIG! Take a baby pool, fill it with sand and little plastic dinosaurs (the eastern store has them cheap), give the kids a small shovel to dig for their dinosaur. We also dig for diamonds! Girls love to find little rings and such in the sand.
31. Pumpkin Ring Toss. We welcome donations from local nurseries for pumpkins, hay bales, corn stalks, gourds, etc. We took about ten of the largest stem gourds and used them as targets for the rong throw. I found wooden hoops at the local fabric store.
32. Pumpkin skittles. I bought a set of those plastic kids pins and then used some of the pumpkins from daycares. Pumpkins roll fun, so it’s more fun.
33. Ping pong ball toss. We bought ten of the plastic pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treating containers that kids use and set them as a goal. He had half a dozen orange ping-pong balls for the kids to throw.
34. One of my favorite games is “Chicken Chucking”. Get some rubber chickens and set up an area where people can throw them into a pen (rubber cleanup bin). I place mine about 30 feet apart and 40 feet apart. It’s funny to see everyone throw it away. When I did it at my church, I found some really cute rubber chicken keychains to give away to people who made it to the barnyard 40 feet away.
