Carnival type games woodworking ideas?

[Timothy Wolf]

Our church has a fairly good amount of woodworkers, artists, and talented people that that can do neat things. We are a small church in a small town just north of Colorado Springs, and we are looking at doing a harvest festival/ halloween alternative this year. We have never done one before and are in need of Ideas to put together some carnival type games, I already figured we could do a bean bag toss cut out with a sheet of plywood and a picture painted on front, but I''m kinda lacking in the creativity department for this so I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or pictures of something you may have done in the past. Like I said before we have a ton of woodworkers in our church so we could probably do some really neat woodworking projects for these games. If it works out well we may turn it into an annual event, otherwise I'm sure we could use some of the games for other activities as well.

[Greg Portland]

Take a look @ cornhole: http://www.cornholegameplayers.com/
The site has plans for the board, scoring towers, drink holders, etc., etc.

[Kurt Cady]

Someone not long ago posted a Plinko-type game. Looked slick and easy/quick to build. I can't find the post at the moment, I even think I remember him using mohogany plywood

Edit: Found it. If I could spell searching would be easier :)


http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?171632-Plinko&highlight=plinko

[Timothy Wolf]

Thanks for helping me those are some neat ideas

[Mike Heidrick]

Ring toss with dowles - game in the shape of a fry carton - dowles are the fries.

Toilet bowl bean bag toss

Go fish with wooden fish and rare earth magnets on the end of rope on broom handles

Boxes with drop wooden clothes pins in from standing height

Boxes like treasure chests filled with newspaper with treasures mixed in

Use oriental trading to get prizes and treasures on the cheap - kids love that

Wooden pins to use like bowling or tennis ball pitches at them



We have these at "the Western Round up play day" at work for kids of employees one day a year.

We also bring in face painters, characture artists, a petting zoo, and a pony ride but those cost a bit I am sure.

We also do a self decorate straw cowboy hat stand with fabric gel paint, stickers, and glitter and other plastic jewels and decorations to glue on.

Its a lot of fun.

[Jay Jeffery]

Get a hold of a large tree stump or 3, some hammers, and lots of inexpensive nails. The kids/teens/adults see how quickly they can pound a nail into the stump, or in the fewest number of hits. The stumps could even be of different levelss of dificulty. Dad has to put the 16 penny nail into the white oak stump before junior puts the finish nail into the pine. Ready, set, GO!

[Mike Heidrick]

Another one was some tires and rims and a hub. You had to see how fast you could mount the tire. This one used impacts from Harbor freight but you could do it with tire irons too. Had a stopwatch setup.

[Joe Hillmann]

A roller bowler game is easy to build and are fun to play (billiard balls work good for the balls) I think the plinko is also a great idea.

[Joe Hillmann]

If you are doing it as a fundraiser building a spiral wishing well might be worth looking into.

[Lloyd James]

I was thinking of a maze marble type game. Everyone has seen the 1 foot sq. wooden marble game that you till with knobs. My idea is to make 2 or 3 mazes
(I know this takes more time) that have fewer passage ways than the one on Ebay. You make the passage ways larger to handle golf balls or small rubber balls, and you make it so you do the tillting by holding the whole game with your hands (of course the game will be small. You don't put
any holes where the balls would fall in, like some of the small contained plastic puzzles that fit in your hands. It is just a race to get the ball from A to B. Or it could be a timed thing.

[Mark Patoka]

These don't require woodworking skills but a couple games we've done for our Harvest Festivals:

- Putting green. I have a 9' strip of fake grass/putting green. Bought a styrofoam pumpkin/jack-o-lantern, cut out the bottom mouth opening and the kids have to putt the ball into the mouth of the jack-o-lantern. Can adjust distance based on age of child.

- Squirt gun gallery. Setup a couple candles on a table, light the flames. Kids stand back several feet and have to shootout the flame using a squirt gun. This can get messy if held indoors so need to allow for the water mess. Use the small pistol-style squirt guns to make it more challenging, not the super-soaker rifles. You can have shootouts against each other to see who wins or just have them do it individually.

- Donut-eating. Tie mini-donuts (powdered sugar makes it more fun) to strings that are suspended from a pole or bar. Without using their hands, participants need to eat their donut, first one done wins. You can easily have a large number of people do this as once, adjust the length of the string to make it more challenging, etc.

- To expand on the nail hammering game mentioned above, one time we used tack hammers to hammer large nails into a block of wood. Takes a lot longer than you think.