Carnival Style games

@Letpchess said in #1:
> I'll be putting on a school event soon. My team and I have planned fun foods and many fun games for the kids like beanbag toss, landing a ping pong ball in certain cups, a bowling game with a light ball and plastic pens, mission impossible maze game where you crawl through a maze without touching strings, guessing games, lollipop pull to win a prize, velcro balls thrown at a target, ...just many types of games and cookie decorating, costume contest, karaoke, just dance etc...The kids will play and can win tickets to redeem for prizes... We're good to go, but I wondered if you had a favorite carnival game you liked once upon a time...

"Trip to Jerusalem" aka "Musical Chairs"

I used to always find this game very funny - and it should still be a lot of fun for the children today.

One of the ones that we used to do was a big box maze that kids have to race through. We then kept a running score of the records. This was the top winner by far for all of the younger boys. Most jumps of the jump rope, anything competition based let the kiddos get some of their energy out.

I remember that there is a carnival game related to football: it's like bowling but with a ball and you have to knock down the pins with the ball. the difference is that you can vary the ways and distance of shooting. I have also seen games where you have to take a penalty or a free kick and if it goes in you win

Thanks for the ideas guys... Sorry for the confusion at the beginning of the forum.. I tried to edit something and ended up quoting myself... so I deleted the first post...

Really appreciate your tips ... We thought of the musical chairs type game and I love that one too, but we decided since we have so many guests visiting and kids of all ages that we might have an issue of kids get too aggressive and landing on the floor or something. hahaha... We know our kids well, but aren't quite sure of all the personalities coming in the door, so we want games that are played one at a time so we can make sure everyone "plays nice."

I like the idea shared about the competition of racing individually through a maze and keeping the top score to beat... that's a cool twist and helps because we have space constraints and not enough room for multiple kids to race each other effectively...

Yes, throwing a football... like that too, except we are indoors so we chose rolling a ball at pins and tossing a bean bag at a low box with holes and point values.... all those "sporty" accuracy games are great... thanks!

Love the ideas you all are sharing... reminds me of my childhood... When I was a kid, my dad built a plinko style board like on the "price is right" show and kids could drop a round disk to bounce down through the pegs on a board to land in a slot for a prize. It was cool... wish I had that right about now... Also he build a prize wheel to spin for a prize. We can use an electronic one online to do the same type of thing, but I like the old-school method better. :-)

OK! I think this kind of activity is great! It's great to want kids to do non-virtual things, where they can have fun and make friends. It saddens me to know that there are very young children who are already with phones or iPads in the stroller. I'm not saying that video games or the internet are bad, but it's the use and the time spent behind a screen that counts

@Dukedog said in #8:
> My favorite at the school carnival was the fishing game. You lowered a line tied to a fishing pole over a blanket and a volunteer ( teacher, parent whoever would tie a brown paper bag to the line and you'd pull the line up and see what you had won. All the bags were different but you always knew you'd get an eraser.Cheap toys,maybe some bubble gum. The big score was a yoyo.
>
> The mystery was half the fun.

Oh yes! I remember this one! We might still have time to pull that off! We have a LOT of extra prizes that we could spare for something like that and it is cute! Thanks!