Harvest Festival Planning

It's right up there with VBS and Summer Camp for many Children's Pastors.... your Fall/ Harvest/ Halloween Alternative Celebration!

If you've never done a Fall Festival at your church, here are some ideas for you:

1. Decide if you are offering an alternative for your community ON OCT. 31. or if you are offering a festival type of celebration on a different night of the week. The answer to that question will determine everything else you do. (Publicity, Music, Food, etc.)

2. Recruit your planning team at least 4-5 months in advance and dream away!  Divide up the various areas of responsibility  SUCH AS:

*Food  (Will you sell food, or will it be free?  Will you have your church members cook the food, or will you bring in a food truck or caterer?  There are pros and cons to each.)  We charge a small fee for our hot dogs and hamburgers and have also done nachos, chili, popcorn, and even grilled chicken in the past.  Don't forget to have plenty of water, coffee, hot chocolate and lemonade on hand!

*Games/ Booths  (you can rent carnival games from various places, or you can make your own and store them away from year to year.  The ideas are endless! It's a good idea to have some challenging games for older elementary kids, and very simple games for toddlers and preschoolers.)
*Bouncers (if you have enough space, think about some bouncers for older elementary kids like obstacle courses or climbing walls, and separate bouncers for younger children under age 5 so they don't get squished in the big bouncers!)
*Publicity (posters, flyers, newspaper, a mailing to your community, door to door canvasing of the neighborhoods around your church, radio stations, local schools in your area.)

*Decorations:  balloons, hay bales, scarecrows, etc.  You might also want to have a photo backdrop area that can double as part of your decorations!
*Safety/ Security (if your church is on a busy street you might want some volunteers from your church to wander around and ensure that children make it safely in and out of your property.)





3.  That special flair and pizzazz you can add to your Harvest/ Fall Celebration:

• How about a Trunk or Treat... families decorate the back ends of their cars and hand out candy from their trunks!  Give a prize to the best decorated car!
• A Hay Ride!  Get a giant tractor with a flatbed full of hay, serve Hot Apple Cider and take the kids on a spin around the church parking lot, or the block!
• A petting zoo!  Nothing says "Harvest" like farm animals!  Depending on where you live, you can ask people in your community to bring in farm animals, or you can rent them from a party organization.
• Balloon Animals.... someone to walk around making balloon animals for children.
• A Jail.  If you're having a western theme, try making a "jail."  Kids get so excited getting to fill out an arrest warrent to lock up their mom or dad or favorite Sunday School Teacher for 5 minutes!  
• Drawings or Raffles.... This is a great idea if you are trying to collect names, addresses, phone numbers or email addresses from your fair participants.  We've raffled off large gift baskets donated by the adult sunday school classes, bikes, razor scooters, DVD's, Playstations, etc.  
• A Candy Guessing Game... Same idea as a raffle but on a smaller scale.  People fill out a slip of paper with their name, address and phone number on it, and guess how many pieces of candy corn are in the jar!  
• Face Painting
• If you live in an area of the country that can be very cold or even rainy, try setting up a play area inside for babies and toddlers, with toys from your nursery.  Moms of babies and toddlers will appreciate you so much if you have an area for them to rest, look after their babies while the rest of their children play! 
• Crafts or pumpkin painting. 
• And finally, TWO KID FAVORITES at the festivals I have seen:  a BBQ shooting range, shooting at soda cans, AND a cardboard box maze where kids crawl through darkened tunnels made out of boxes.  Takes a lot of time to build (and a ton of ducktape), but it is so fun! 

SET UP and CLEAN UP:  The few hours before the Harvest Festival can be very crazy.  If you as the person in charge have all the answers or all the information needed for set up in your head, then you are going to be the one doing most of the work.  Everyone will come to YOU for answers to their questions.  Think about how you can prevent that from happening. Perhaps by sitting down with 2 or 3 key leaders ahead of time and explaining the placement of the games, bouncers, food, etc. will spread out the responsibility.  Create a MAP so everyone helping you set up can see where everything is supposed to go. Create a "punch list" with all the jobs listed on 3 x 5 cards. Pin those 3 x 5 cards to a bulletin board. When someone takes a job to do (for example, filling up the kiddie pool for one of the games), they take that 3 x 5 card off the bulletin board or turn it over upside down so everyone else knows that it's done!  Your set up will be fast and efficient! 

So please share your favorite Harvest Festival idea with the rest of us!  Leave a comment here and share your ideas!