Family fall festivals are great opportunities for ministry to your community. If you’re looking for great ideas for your church’s fall festival, we’ve got you covered. Check out these 90 ideas for crafts, games, food, and MORE—all from children’s ministry leaders just like you! 

90 Ideas for Fall Festival Fun for Families and Kids

Prize Ideas for Fall Festivals

1. Treasure Box: Let kids dig for prizes in a sand-filled aquarium.
2. Door Prizes: As families enter your building, give each guest a ticket for a drawing at the end of your fall fest. Tell families that they must be present to win the grand prize.
3. Treasure Dig: Let kids dig around in a kiddie pool filled with plastic foam packing peanuts and small toys.
4. Cheap Thrills: Gather inexpensive prizes from the dollar store.
5. Church Donations: Have a sign-up sheet for church members to donate specific prizes or booth supplies.
6. Prize Finds: Request giveaways, promotional items, and gift certificates from restaurants, stores, and companies in your area.
7. Candy Admission: For their “admission ticket” request that families each bring a bag of individually wrapped candies that you’ll give away as prizes throughout the fall festival. And if some families can’t bring a bag, welcome them anyway!
8. Toy Collection: Have kids bring a clean toy, stuffed animal, or game they’ve outgrown as their admission. Hand out a ticket for each toy brought, and let kids cash in tickets for prizes.
9. Sucker Tree: Have kids pull lollipops from a pegboard. The color of the sucker handle corresponds to a prize.

Craft Ideas for Fall Festivals

1. Masquerade: Kids make masks out of paper plates.
2. Art Mural: Adhere a large piece of bulletin board paper to a wall or lay it on the floor and let kids create a masterpiece.
3. Colorful Caps: Kids decorate old baseball caps by gluing on beads, buttons, ribbons, sequins, feathers, and fabric scraps.
4. Swirl Painting: Kids make art designs from swirl painting kits—available at toy stores.
5. Pumpkin Decorating: Give kids craft supplies and markers for low-mess decorating.
6. Creation Station: Kids create art with this “putty”: Stir 4 tablespoons of glue and a few drops of food coloring in a bowl. Add a few teaspoons of dissolved borax water solution. Stir. Then squeeze it like dough. Provide water for washing hands and plastic bags for the putty.

Bible-Based Activities for Fall Festivals

Indoor Ideas

1. Puppet Shows: Host a new puppet show every half hour in your sanctuary. If you need puppet show ideas, check these out!
2. I Was There: Have people dressed as Bible characters deliver monologues. For example, a “leper” could run through the crowd yelling “have you seen Jesus?” Once the leper has an audience, he delivers a monologue about how he’s searching for Jesus—the Master Physician.
3. Jonah and the Big Fish: Decorate a refrigerator box to look like a big fish. Hang moss on the top inside of the box. Use a red light inside and have “Jonah” tell his story.
4. Super Hero Story Tent: Every half-hour, have a creative storyteller tell a different Bible story.
5. Live Reformers: Recruit church members to dress as church history figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, or John Knox. They’ll give brief presentations about what happened in their lives.
6. Bean the Philistine: Let kids sling small beanbags at a life-size plywood cutout of Goliath.

Outdoor Ideas

1. Exploration Point: Fill a sandbox with objects to tell a Bible story. Give kids toy shovels to dig out the objects. Then tell them the story.
2. Noah’s Super Boat Race: Fill capped, plastic rain gutters with colored water and lay them on parallel tables. Give children small plastic boats to blow the length of the gutters. Have someone tell the story of Noah’s ark.
3. Jonah’s Super Soaker: Turn on the sprinklers, and let kids run through them. Then guide kids to crawl under a table draped with blue sheets. Lay plastic sheeting under the table and cover it with cooked spaghetti. Stake a whale painted with gaping jaws against the table. Tape clear plastic to the whale to keep it dry.
4. Moses’ Super Journey Obstacle Course: Make a Bible-themed obstacle course! Children experience the Israelite’s journey by running through sprinklers, eating graham cracker manna, carrying cardboard tablets over sturdy step ladders, pushing through oversize grape clusters of purple balloons, fighting giant cardboard cutouts with bed pillows, and running through streamers until they make it to the finish line—the Promised Land!

Other Activities for Fall Festivals

Indoor Ideas

1. Family Photo Booth: Families pose for instant-print photos. Then place photos in kid-decorated frames.
2. Karaoke Singing: Kids sing their choice of song on a little stage, complete with a microphone.
3. What’s in a Name: Give kids printouts with their name and its meaning (taken from baby name books or articles).
4. Music Videos: Set up a camera so its video recording function will play through a television. Kids pick their wardrobes from old clothes and wigs. Kids then lip-sync to Christian music while watching themselves on TV.
5. Pastor Pop Up: Have your pastor walk around during the fall festival, handing out candy to families and welcoming them to your church.
6. Caricature Drawings: Hire a local artist to draw pictures of kids and families.
7. Costume Parade: Lead a parade of (appropriately) costumed participants around your fall festival area.
8. Tunnel of Fun: Set up a giant tunnel made from old appliance boxes. Let kids crawl through. And make sure there are plenty of exit points for any kids who might get scared!
9. Merry Time: Kids race to decorate a miniature Christmas tree. They let the judge know they’re finished by singing a Christmas carol.
10. Tattooed: Kids get fake tattoos—available at stores.
11. This Is Me: Use a desk lamp to shine light on a hanging paper on the wall. Have children stand between the light and the wall while an artist outlines their profiles.

Outdoor Ideas

1. Ball Cage: Rent a ball cage that’s big enough for parents to play in also.
2. Emergency Vehicles: Contact local first responder agencies to see if they can provide fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars to display. Kids love sitting in the front seats of these vehicles and learning about first responders’ jobs.
3. Model Cars: Give the collectors in your church a chance to show their prize possessions.
4. Pony Rides: Kids ride ponies in a circle (with adult supervision).
5. Petting Zoo: Bring in soft, furry animals for children to enjoy.
6. Gospel Sing: Have a talent show on a flatbed truck.
7. Hayrides: Take children on an enclosed flatbed truck hayride around several city blocks—or around your church parking lot.

Game Ideas for Fall Festivals

Indoor Ideas

1. Bean Bag Toss: Kids toss small bean bags into plastic buckets.
2. Bingo: Designate a bingo room, and recruit a volunteer to lead games throughout the festival.
3. Clothespin Drop: Kids stand on a stool and drop clothespins into a wide-mouth jar below them.
4. Milk Can Toss: Kids toss softballs at milk cans or empty 2-liter bottles.
5. Dart Throw: Kids throw darts at balloons on a cork board.
6. Putt Putt Golf: Kids play through a miniature course.
7. Floating Ducks: Kids pick up plastic ducks from a wading pool. The number on the duck corresponds to a prize.
8. Bowling: Kids play with a plastic bowling set.
9. Basketball Shoot: Kids toss a basketball through a PlaySkool hoop.
10. Face Painting: Recruit artistic church members to decorate kids’ faces.
11. Ring It : Children toss embroidery hoops over empty two-liter bottles arranged similar to bowling pins on the floor.
12. Ring It Again: Kids toss hoops at prizes set up on tables or boxes. Prizes include bubbles, soft drinks, and small toys.
13. Can Alley: Cut out one side of a big box. Hang soft drink cans from strings inside the box. Kids try to hit the cans by tossing ping pong balls.
14. Blow and Go Race: Four children race on the floor using party blowers to blow ping pong balls to a finish line.
15. Ping-Pong Blow: Teams of three compete to blow ping-pong balls to the other end of a table, using drinking straws.
16. Muffin Pan Toss: Kids toss 10 coins into a muffin tin with numbered holes; pieces of felt in the bottom of the tin keep coins from bouncing out.
17. Fishing Game:  Kids throw fishing lines with clothespins attached to the ends over a wall. A volunteer behind the wall attaches candy or other prizes to the clothespins. Then kids reel in their catch.

Outdoor Ideas

1. Knock It Off: Kids use water squirters to knock ping-pong balls off tops of soft drink bottles.
2. This Little Light of Mine: Standing 3 feet away from three lit candles, kids try to extinguish the candles before their squirt bottle runs out of water.
3. Water Sponge Toss: Kids toss a sponge at a person peeking through a plywood cutout.
4. Water Sponge Toss Two: Kids toss sponges into lined up buckets.
5. Dunking Booth: Put pastors, church staff, and teachers in a rented dunking booth.
6. Piñata: Every hour, gather kids together to bust a piñata.
7. Obstacle Course: Preschoolers go over, under, and through a course.
8. Scoop for Apples: A germ-conscious alternative to bobbing for apples. Attach a cup to the end of a fishing line, and have kids try to scoop apples into their cups.
9. Pumpkin Sweep: Children sweep a small pumpkin along a taped course on the floor. Kids can race against each other or against time.
10. The Carpenter’s Crew: Each player is given a hammer and a board with three already started nails. On go, the carpenter is given 30 seconds to hammer as many nails as possible. You can also provide wooden peg and mallet toys for younger kids.
11. Football Toss: Kids toss a football through a hanging, swinging tire.
12. The Mummy Wrap: One player is the “wrapper,” the other is the “wrappee.” Racing against time, the wrapper wraps the wrappee with an entire roll of toilet paper.
13. Coin Splash: Fill an aquarium with water. Sink three tall glasses so they sit upright on the bottom of the tank. Kids try to drop coins into the glasses.

Food Ideas for Fall Festivals

1. Finger Foods: Put a piece of candy corn in each fingertip of a clear rubber glove. Then stuff the glove with popcorn. Tie the glove with curling ribbon.
2. Taffy Pull: Have an old-fashioned snack experience! Have everyone wash hands first, then find a partner. Each pair can take a piece of taffy to pull and stretch between them to see how far they can stretch their piece before eating.
3. Popcorn: Attach straps to a tray. Fill popcorn boxes and place on the tray. Have a wandering hawker wear the tray and give away the popcorn.
4. Colorful Kool-Aid: Freeze Kool-Aid in ice trays. Pour a clear soft drink over the cubes. Serve in clear cups and watch the color change.
5. Banana Pops: Insert Popsicle sticks into bananas. Dip in melted chocolate. Freeze for two hours.
6. Candy Grab: Kids get one chance to grab all the candy they can out of a bucket using one hand.
7. Cotton Candy: Rent a machine, then all you need is gobs of sugar. Be aware that the machines can get hot over time, so keep little hands well away.
8. Graham Cracker Houses: Lay out graham crackers, frosting, and an assortment of candy. Let kids and families make fall-themed houses with the supplies. And don’t waste food! Let families eat their houses after they snap a picture of their finished product.
9. Edible Bracelets: Kids make bracelets by putting Fruit Loops on licorice laces.
10. Cookie Decorating: Provide shaped sugar cookies, icing, and sprinkles.
11. Dirt Worm Cups: Let kids make a muddy mess. Let kids put gummy worms in a pudding cup and then sprinkle Oreo crumbs on top. Then let them enjoy their creations! (And have hand wipes nearby to clean up kids’ messes.)

Final Tips for Your Fall Festival Success

1. Everyone Wins: Give everyone a “thanks for being here” prize at each booth. Don’t let any kid walk away feeling like he lost.
2. Instant Booth: Hang sheets on four PVC pipes. Connect the pipes and suspend from the ceiling with sturdy fishing line. You’ve just created a booth area.
3. Give It Away: Encourage each participant donate a nonperishable food that can later be donated to a local food pantry.
4. Costumes: Choose a theme and have kids come in costume for that theme. Discourage scary costumes, but be gracious toward visitors who didn’t know about that rule. Think outreach!
5. Everyone Play: Encourage parents and fall festival staff to dress in costume also.
6. Staffing: Staff your fall festival with teenagers, grandparents, and singles in your ministry. This way, parents and caregivers will be free to help their children at the booths.

Special thanks to the following contributors: Cheryl Russell, Ellynne Wiebe, Sandra Klinsing, Karen Claunch, Loretta Bueckert, William Pesata, Amy Brown, Keith Wilson, Kandi Elliott, Nancy Hastings, Gail V., Cathy Gould, Marilyn Marsh, and Diane Ritchie.

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Need more fall fest info? Check out these posts! And for more fall family fun, check out Team Family’s fall PowerPaks to help families grow spiritually and relationally together at home.