Dining in the Dark: A Deliciously Dark Fall Activity
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Put on your costume and grab your blindfold - it’s time for a deliciously dark family-fun activity, perfect for fall. Have you heard of this new craze? It’s in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York - and now, your house! Dining in the dark is the new way to truly experience the sweet scents and savory delights of everyday food. And really, who doesn’t want to try unicorn poop?
Dining Blindfolded
Let’s get to the most important part first…the actual dining in the dark.
Ask everyone to bring a blindfold and have a few extra available in case people forget. You don’t want anyone to miss out!
Prep the food ahead of time on trays in small sizes, and then cover or hide the trays. We prepped three items total per person, one at a time. Here’s a list of items we considered using (and then named them differently):
stroopwafels = snake skins
fruit leather = moldy socks
Jet-puffed marshmallow cream on graham crackers = unicorn snot
meringue cookies = cloud poop
gummy bears = yeti candy
small piece of white cake = polar bear poop
3. Set up your table with plenty of elbow room so you have room to serve the food items. We had about thirty attendees, so set up our tables for 15 people and had two different groups, three rounds of different food for each group.
4. Give instructions to not identify the food they’ve tasted until everyone has tried it. Then you can have a big “Shout it out!” moment for each item.
With the blindfolds on, heightening one’s sense of taste and smell, the sweet treats are quite a delectable moment. All of our kids’ shrieks of delight and giggles of silliness really made the experience special. For me, it was so fun to get to know the other moms and dads especially as they reacted to the various foods.
Guess What’s Gross
Take a box, put some dividers in it, cut some holes on top, and put some fun textured items inside. Then, ask the kids to stick their hands inside and guess what the actual item is. Eyeballs are peeled grapes, webs are hair nets, brains are noodles, and a liver can be a blob of slime. Whatever you choose, it’s a really fun way for your kids to use their sense of touch to identify what the scary body part really is. Feel free to download our Guess What’s Gross printables, or get creative and make your own!
Cookie Decorating and Crafts
We had a cookie decorating station that gave our kids full freedom to decorate one cookie to their heart’s delight. Stay away from the black icing - it’s quite the mess! We also offered a fall craft station with wooden pumpkins to decorate with wood markers or acrylic paint pens for the older kiddos. It was an easy, mess-free activity. With these two stations plus the Guess What’s Gross station, our kids had plenty of things to do while they waited for all our friends to show up.
Party Play List
Need a Halloween play list for your party? We’ve already curated one for you! Check ours out on Spotify. It includes favorite like Ghostbusters, Day-O (Beetle Juice, anyone?!) and This is Halloween. It was fun for kids and adults!
Costume Parade
I love to have as many reasons to wear our Halloween costumes as possible…a bigger bang for our buck! It felt so festive with everyone dressed up in their Halloween best! So, near the end of the night, we had a two minute kids’ costume parade to the song “Monster Mash” with light-up rings (which the kids were super excited about!). Our kids were so giddy as I lined them up for the parade and handed out their rings.
Action Dice
Technically, they are education cubes. They are a set of foam cubes with pockets to add cards with any combination of things on them. For Dining in the Dark, we used movement in one cube, sounds in another, and who performs it (one, all or pick a partner) in the third. Every time you roll them, you have a different combination to perform. The kids loved this exercise under the stars while wearing their capes and fairy wings. We ended the night with this activity, and the kids could have played this for triple as long. The night, however, was getting late, and it was time to wrap up the evening. You can download, print and cut-out our Dining in the Dark Action Dice, or you can make your own!
Lessons to Learn
Although we did not dive into this aspect at our event, you can really prep your kids for this experience by teaching them about blindness and the effect it has on one’s other senses. You can watch YouTubes about those who live in blindness and the talents they have. You can study people like Ray Charles or Helen Keller. You can have a blind maze activity, giving directional queues to guide your kids through the maze.
It was quite the memorable night. Yes, it was a lot of work, but it paid off big in smiles, giggles, and a delectable fall family experience for us all.
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