3 Fun Halloween Games

Do you plan to skip trick-or-treating this Halloween? You don’t have to skip all the candy fun. This year, switch up your traditions and try some Halloween candy games to get your family together for a night of craziness and laughter.

Here are three fun candy Halloween activities that will get your whole family celebrating.

1. Don’t Eat Pete!

In the game “Don’t Eat Pete,” players get to eat candy on every turn. It’s a way to be silly, make some noise, and eat candy all at the same time.

To play, draw a 3 x 3 grid on a piece of paper, and put a small candy, like an M&M or a jelly bean, in each square. Have a leader secretly choose a piece to be “Pete.” Then let the rest of the people take turns eating the candy. When someone eats the chosen piece, the leader yells “Don’t eat Pete!” and you start a new round.

For an alternative version, send one player out of the room and have the rest of the group choose “Pete.” Then the player returns and starts eating the candy. When the player eats “Pete,” everybody yells together, “Don’t eat Pete!”

2. M&M Knife Game

In the M&M Knife Game, each player gets to scoop up their own candy--with a knife! Fill a bowl with M&M’s, then pass around a butter knife and let each person try to scoop up a serving of candy. You’ll have a great time watching the tricks and techniques kids use to keep candy from sliding off the knife blade.

3. Guess the Number of Candies--With Math!

Fill a small glass jar with candies and have people guess how many are in the jar. But they can use math to guess!

Use a scale to weigh an empty jar, weigh the full jar to find the weight of the candy, and weigh extra candy pieces to find their individual weight. Then divide the weight of the candy by the weight of one candy to find how many there are total.

You can also invite kids to count the pieces they see and guess how many more there are, or just guess wild numbers. After the game, give the candy to the winner--or let everyone eat it together!

Keep Your Halloween Fun

This year, turning away from extra Halloween activities can help us turn towards our families instead. Dress up in costumes, carve your favorite Jack-o’-lanterns, and play the silliest Halloween games you can think of. Because Halloween’s not just about candy--it’s about having fun together.

Need more family Halloween activities? You can find candy science ideas on the Candy Experiments page.

4 Great Experiments for Destroying Halloween Candy

Overloaded with Halloween candy? It’s time to get your candy bubbling, breaking, melting, freezing, and oozing with candy experiments.

Drop a Warhead in baking soda water, and bubbles erupt. Leave a Skittle in water, and the S floats to the surface. Melt a Starburst, and shiny oil spots form. You're doing candy experiments--science experiments with candy.

Melt Halloween candy. Dissolve Valentine hearts. Float Easter Peeps. Or let your kids create their own candy science experiments.

Candy experiments. All candy. All science. All fun.

As seen in Family Fun, Parents, Mothering Magazine, Highlights, the Chicago Tribune, ParentMap, Miami Family, and The Red Tricycle

6 Ways to Destroy Easter Peeps With Candy Experiments

What's more fun than eating Peeps? Destroying them with candy experiments!

Here are some favorite Peeps experiments from around the internet.

1. Peeps Duel

Have your Peeps duel each other. Stick a toothpick in each Peeps marshmallow and put two in the microwave facing each other. The first Peep to touch the other with a toothpick wins the duel.

2. Testing Stale Peeps

What can you do with old Peeps? Well, they won’t win any jousting contests.

When you microwave marshmallow Peeps, the water trapped inside turns to steam while the gelatin softens, causing the marshmallow to expand. But if the Peeps dry out and go stale, there’s less water to help them expand. That’s why stale Peeps don’t get nearly as big in the microwave--and why they won’t win the jousts.

Check out this Smithsonian video to learn more.

3. Smashing Peeps with Dry Ice

Want to smash Peeps with a hammer? Put them in a cooler with some dry ice. The dry ice freezes the water and gelatin, making your Easter candy as brittle as ice.

4. Giant Peeps, Shrinking Peeps

When you put marshmallows inside a sealed container and vacuum out the air, they grow! Let the air out again, and they collapse.

5. Sink a Peeps

Peeps float because they're less dense than water--all those air bubbles spread the sugar out. But if you smash the Peeps to destroy the air bubbles and make it smaller, you can teach it to swim!

6. Bleach the Peeps

Peeps are covered with colored sugar, which dissolves in water. But because the Peeps marshmallow contains gelatin, the marshmallow part doesn’t dissolve. Place the Peeps in water to create stripes!

Ultimate Destruction!

To see how the scientists destroy Peeps, watch these videos from the Great Lakes Science Center. See Peeps dissolve in sulferic acid, vaporize in molten chlorate, and get electrocuted!

Sinking Peeps and Marshmallows

This Peeps candy experiment sends marshmallows diving to the bottom of a bowl!

What you need:

• Peeps marshmallow candies
• Container of water
• Cutting board and cornstarch (optional)

What to do:

1. Smash the Peeps marshmallow by rolling it between your palms or flattening it against a hard surface.
   (Hint: sprinkle a cutting board with cornstarch and roll the Peeps in cornstarch to keep it from becoming too sticky as you smash it. You may want to flatten it with a rolling pin.)
2. Roll the marshmallow into a ball to make it less buoyant.
3. Drop the smashed Peeps in water.
4. Does the candy sink?

What's happening:

To sink a Peeps marshmallow, you must make it denser by making it smaller. If you smash it to remove air bubbles and make the marshmallow more compact, you can make it denser than the water. Then it will sink.

Play a game with your friends to see who is strong enough to sink a marshmallow. Anyone who manages to sink a marshmallow becomes a marshmallow champion!

Growing and Shrinking Marshmallows

Make marshmallows shrink and grow in vacuum chamber! You should be able to do this with a kitchen vacuum pack gadget such as a Seal-a-Meal.

What you need:

• Vacuum seal container, such as a Seal-a-Meal
• Marshmallows or Peeps candy

What to do:

1. Place the marshmallows or Peeps in the sealed container.
2. Attach the vacuum.
3. Start the vacuum and watch your marshmallows expand.
4. Turn off the vacuum. Do the marshmallows collapse?

What's happening:
Marshmallows contain tiny air bubbles. The air inside the marshmallows pushes out, while the air around the marshmallows pushes in. When air is pumped out of the container, reducing the air pressure, the air bubbles inside the marshmallow push outwards and cause the marshmallow to grow.

As the marshmallow grows, the air bubbles inside start to rupture. When you turn off the vacuum and allow air back in, the marshmallow shrinks back to normal size. But since some of the air bubbles have been destroyed, it wrinkles and collapses even further.

Sugar and Marketing

Since I'm so interested in candy's science and history, I both enjoyed and was horrified by the book Sugar: The World Corrupted by James Walvin.

I learned that the European desire for sugar fueled the creation of plantations and slavery in the Americas. After slavery 'officially' ended in America after the Civil War, the sugar industry continued to use workers in conditions resembling slavery. These included indentured Indian laborers in British colonies; indentured Chinese and Japanese workers in the Carribean and South America, and poorly paid migrant workers in Florida.

Now our dependence on sugar has caused obesity rates to skyrocket. We're the targets and victims of marketing campaigns whose scope we can hardly imagine.

Amount of money spent on advertising to the young:

• $792 million on breakfast cereals
• $549 million on soft drinks
• $330 million on snacks

"Only the automobile industry spent more money on advertising than the US food industry--understandably, perhaps, when we realise that 12.5 percent of all American consumer spending goes on food."

Sugar: The World Corrupted: From Slavery to Obesity by James Walvin, 2018