If you haven’t heard of the “You’ve Been BOOed” activity, game, secret surprise, or whatever you want to call it, it’s a fun thing to do. It’s like a Secret Santa for Halloween.
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What is a “You’ve Been BOOed” activity?
“You’ve Been BOOed” is like a Secret Santa gift exchange, but the gifts are Halloween themed instead of Christmas themed. You can do this for work, school, or in your neighborhood during the month of October to lead up to Halloween.
It’s a fun activity and the secret sneakiness of it will be fun for kids to participate in. I would suggest that you don’t go sneaking around your neighborhood at night, though, that’s a good way to get the police called on you. Plan on leaving the treats at people’s doors during the day, and wear a mask if you really want to be anonymous since there are so many doorbell cameras now.
It’s likely that you’ll be recognized, but that’s okay, figuring out who “BOOed” you is part of the fun.
This is also something fun that kids can do for a grandparent or a friend. Put together a gift basket with DIY Halloween crafts, little gifts they’d like, and then drop it off. You should probably put who it’s from on it, though, and not add the part about passing it along if you do it this way.
How to Boo someone.
The basic rules of this are that you leave a treat for someone anonymously, and put a message in it explaining that they’ve been BOOed, and should pass it on to someone else to keep it going.
You can put the treats in a bag, basket, or a customized gift box (get some in our Halloween party collection on Zazzle.)
If you don’t want it to be anonymous, you can add your name so that they know who the treats came from.
Some workplaces will do an elaborate Secret Santa-type gift exchange where you give each other You’ve Been BOOed gift baskets, but you don’t have to go to those lengths. A simple bag of candy is a fun thing to hand out so that people get a little treat ahead of trick or treating.
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What to give for You’ve Been BOOed treats.
If you know the people you’re giving the treats to, and you know that they know you and will eat things that you give them, wrapped candy is fine. If you’re leaving things anonymously most people are going to be a little leery of eating something that’s left on their front doorstep, so you might want to avoid anything edible if that’s the case.
I’d avoid anything home baked, for the same reasons I just mentioned, but also because leaving baked goods outside for any length of time is going to end up with ants inside of the bag!
You can go to the Dollar Store to get inexpensive Halloween accessories, spider rings, bookmarks, etc., that can be given out. Anything that’s not edible will be better for people you don’t know as well, too, since they might have food allergies.
If you want to get something that’s themed for the event, you can get customized pens that say “You’ve Been BOOed” on Zazzle in our shop! You can change the text to add your name if you don’t want to be anonymous.
This is a fun activity for a classroom, or you can just make up a bunch of things to give to the kids in the class without being anonymous.
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What to include with You’ve Been BOOed treats.
You’ll want to include a little explanation of what’s going on for the person you’re giving the treats to, because they’ll be clueless otherwise. The gift boxes that we have are printed on the back with the explanation and they also tell people what to do next.
If you want this to be a “pass it on” kind of activity, you need to let people know that they should Boo someone else, and that they should put a sign up on their door to say that they’ve already received a treat. That way, the treats will be spread around and one person won’t get everything and leave someone else out.
I made some printables for you to download and use for this. (You can cut the “We’ve Been BOOed” sign in half to save paper.)
If this is going to be an organized activity with a set number of people participating, it would be good to print enough out for everyone to have them, because some people don’t have a printer handy. If they have the printable done for them it will make it easier for everyone to play along.
Read about throwing a Halloween party here! And get some free printable Halloween candy wrappers here.
Free You’ve Been BOOed printable to download
Download the printables here:
Have fun “BOOing” people, it’s a nice way to treat someone to something they didn’t expect!