Light Party goes down a treat with kids

OCEAN WONDERS: Children dressed up depicting various sea creatures were - colourful sea anemone Jessica McLain, pirate Alex Rope, Hawaiian octopus Taylor Morgan and Tamsin Underwood, dressed as water.

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Close to 100 kids turned up for the Underwater Adventure themed Light Party – a positive alternative to Halloween – held by the Lighthouse Church in Dargaville.

Children and adults alike dressed up as mermaids, scuba divers and all kinds of sea creatures, as an alternative to the American tradition’s trick or treating goblins and ghosts.

Church leader Marion McEwing says members of the church, in particular the Youthquake youth group helped organise this year’s event.

She says the group decided to hold a Light Party "because we wanted to do something positive for the children of our community".

"We didn’t like the negative images associated with Halloween."

Activities for kids included a huge Finding Nemo bouncy castle, face painting, and games where the kids score points to buy prizes.

Games like Wreck the Wreck where kids had to throw a ball at a wreck of ships, or another sunken treasure game where kids worked hard to drop coins onto a pile of treasure at the bottom of a tub of water.

Other activities included a colouring in competition and playstation games to score tokens.

"The tokens could then be redeemed for prizes which ranged from 50 points to 800 depending on the value of the prizes," says Marion.

Prizes kids could redeem with their tokens included soft toys, small swords and pens, and food items like popcorn and jelly cups filled with blue ocean coloured jelly with chocolate marshmallow fish floating in the jelly.

A stage show put on by church members dressed as mermaids who sang barbershop style songs to tell the Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale was also a highlight.

An impressed parent says the event was well thought out as the kids "were having a ball".

- © Fairfax NZ News