Our church has a fall festival. We use a cow trailer for the jail since it already has barns. We have several bales of hay for seats. You pay a ticket to have someone arrested. The person stays in jail until they learn the Bible verse that they drew out of a bucket.
The idea of saying a child going to jail would be fun really bothered me. In my school district we have so many children who have family members in jail-they have to go to the jail to visit their love ones. I myself have had to wipe tears away from little faces because they miss them so much. They struggle with understanding what is the good vs evil when it comes to family who can never be home for their birthday or visit their school on family night. You might think I am being just too sensitive-however this was a teaching moment for adults to think of this idea from a childs point of view.
Depending on each grade: younger ones (k-2) loves the idea of pin the nose on the pumpkin, bean bag, or ring toss while the older ones (3rd grade+) would rather throw a pie at the principal or decorating pumpkins. Good luck.
Something new we are trying this year is a pumpkin decorating contest.
The students can entire their pumpkins (either painted or carved) and the carnival attendees will do a "penny vote" (put pennies in a jar, each penny is 1 vote) for their favorite.
The winner will get a small gift bag of items and the PTO will keep the voting change.
