A community Halloween open house is set to return to Spring Valley on Sunday, Oct. 31.
The event for youth ages 1 to 12 will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Spring Valley Community Center. Activities include games run by Spring Valley Kiwanis and Kingsland Key Club members on the main floor along with a haunted house set up by Key Club members and staffed by Kingsland High School drama students in the stage area.
There is no admission charge, but Key Club members are collecting donations for the Spring Valley Food Shelf. The Key Club is a youth service group at Kingsland High School that is sponsored by the Kiwanis.
Numerous prizes will be awarded at the various game stations and all youth receive a treat bag on their way out of the center once they are finished with the games.
The event is co-sponsored by the Spring Valley Chamber of Commerce in addition to the Key Club and Kiwanis, a service organization with a guiding principle of “improving the world one child and one community at a time.”
Other groups have partnered with the event organizers to provide Halloween safety and promote reading.
The Spring Valley VFW Post 4114 is sponsoring a Lite-a-Tyke program during the event. The local VFW has been participating in this event for about the last decade.
VFW members will be at a table to distribute reflective stickers to put on the costumes or coats of children, or adults, so people going trick-or-treating are visible if they go out that night after the open house. The effort is the local VFW post’s premier safety program.
Another addition to the open house is a reading table put on by the Kiwanis Young Children Priority One Committee. This has been a part of the event for the past several years.
Committee members set up a table with books from the Kiwanis Reading Project. The children can select a book for a Kiwanis member to read to them at the open house or to take home for their parents to read to them later. There will also be a drawing that children may enter with winners getting to pick from a box of unique books.
There is no cost for the safety sticker or the book. Just look for the sticker table or the book table, both which will be separate from the many game stations.
The Halloween open house has been a tradition for decades, but took a break last year due to pandemic restrictions.
