For my daughter's 3rd birthday, she wanted a hay ride. So I worked off of that idea for her early November birthday party. We borrowed a lawn tractor and a flat 2 wheel cart to pull behind. Of
course we practiced driving it through our yard before the party. We have a fairly large yard with woods at the rear. When some children arrived, they played in the yard on the swing set and
in the driveway until all of the children arrived. Then we loaded them on to the cart which we covered with hay and straw and added a bunch of hay stacks and corn stalks also(left over
Halloween decorations). Some adults also sat aboard to keep an eye on the kids. We made up a little story of the "Halloween princess that lived in the woods and loved children, so she
put some goodies out in her pumpkin patch for them to find..." We had placed pumpkins in an area of the woods at the end of the yard and we drove the tractor to that spot and let the
children jump off and run to find a pumpkin hidden in the straw and hay that we also spread around the path. Each child picked a pumpkin and got aboard the hay ride cart again for a short
trip back to the house. Depending on your neighborhood and neighbors, you can drive a short while on the street or through neighbor's yards. The tractor goes very slow. When we got back to
the house, to their surprise, each pumpkin was carved out and a baggy of candy stuffed inside. Then we decorated the pumpkins with markers and stickers. We had pizza and a Pocahontas cake.
Each child wore a Indian feather hat (we bought at the dollar store) as their party hat. I had made simple brown bag favor bags for the kids and drew a simple picture of the child's face on
it. I used yarn for the hair in their own hair color and glued it on. They were able to find their bags easily, and place their pumpkins inside too!