Harvest Festival Ideas: Dozens of Options for Fall Fun

Harvest festival ideas abound. That’s a good thing, because fall events are more popular than ever! Discover dozens of ideas for prizes, crafts, games, snacks, and more.

Pack your next carnival with these 90 ideas for a family fall festival. Best of all, they come from children’s ministry leaders just like you. A harvest festival is a great opportunity for fun and outreach!

90 Harvest Festival Ideas for Families and Kids

Eye on the Prize

1. Treasure Box – Kids dig for prizes in a sand-filled aquarium.
2. Door Prizes – As they enter, participants get tickets for a drawing held later.
3. Treasure Dig – 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 – Have kids bring a bag of individually wrapped candies to be given away as prizes.
8. Toy Collection – Have kids bring a clean toy, stuffed animal, or game they’ve outgrown as their admission. Give a ticket value to each prize. Kids can cash in tickets for prizes—a la Chuck E. Cheese’s style.
9. Sucker Tree – Kids pull suckers from a pegboard. The color of the sucker handle corresponds to a prize.

Harvest Festival Ideas: Crafts

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 a swirl painting kit—available at toy stores.
5. Pumpkin Decorating – Give kids craft supplies and markers for no-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.

Harvest Festival Ideas: Bible-Based Activities

Indoor

1. Puppet Shows – A new puppet show every half hour in your sanctuary.
2. I Was There – Have 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, a creative storyteller tells a different Bible story.
5. Live Reformers – Costumed Martin Luther, John Calvin, or John Knox give brief presentations about what happened in their lifetimes.
6. Moses’ Super Journey 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 to the Promised Land where they receive compasses.
7. Bean the Philistine – Kids sling small beanbags at a life-size plywood cutout of Goliath.

Outdoor

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.
3. Jonah’s Super Soaker – Children run through a revolving sprinkler head, then 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.

Harvest Festival Ideas: Activities

Indoor

1. Family Photo Booth – Families pose for instant-print photos. Then place photos in kid-decorated frames.
2. Karaoke Singing – Have an adult play the piano. Kids sing their choice of song on a little stage, complete with a microphone.
3. Computer Printout – Kids get 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. Jail – The pastor dresses up as a sheriff and throws people into jail. Create a fun bail requirement for them to get out.
6. Caricature Drawings – A resident artist draws pictures of kids and parents.
7. Costume Parade – (Appropriately) costumed participants parade around your fall festival area.
8. Tunnel of Fun – Kids crawl through a giant tunnel made from old appliance boxes. End the tunnel down a flight of stairs and have kids land on a mattress. Use spotters.
9. Merry Time – Kids race to decorate a miniature tree, then sing a carol in two minutes.

Outdoor

1. Ball Cage – Rent a ball cage 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.
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.
8. Tattooed – Kids get fake tattoos, available at stores.
9. 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.

Fall Festival Games

Indoor

1. Bean Bag Toss – Kids toss small bean bags into plastic buckets.
2. Bingo – Set apart a separate room for an ongoing game.
3. Clothespin Drop – Kids drop clothespins into a wide-mouth jar.
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 – 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 pennies into a muffin tin with numbered holes; pieces of felt in the bottom of the tin keep pennies from bouncing out.
17. Fishing Game – Kids fish over a wall and hook prizes.

Outdoor

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 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. Bobbing for Apples – Kids try to bite apples floating in a tub of water. (Be mindful of any preschoolers. Have an adult volunteer on-hand for constant supervision.)
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. Penny Splash – Fill an aquarium with water. Sink three tall glasses so they sit upright on the bottom of the tank. Kids try to drop pennies into the glasses.