If you’re looking for National Night Out entertainment ideas, Kaleidoscope has been working in partnership with local communities for over a decade to create amazing partnerships.

Here are the top entertainment ideas we’ve seen local police and community partners use to create high-attendance and high-engagement National Night Out ideas happen across CT, MA, RI, NH, VT, and ME.

5 High-Value National Night Out Entertainment Ideas

While these National Night Out entertainment ideas do require professional entertainers, they can often be worth their weight in marketing opportunities!

1. Paw Patrol Mascots

At-A-Glance: Invite families to meet their favorite first responders at your National Night Out–perfect for the theme of community safety!

Ages: Toddlers – 1st grade

Guests Per Hour: 20-30 families per hour.

Marketing Considerations: When booking a mascot company, ask for photos of their actual mascots so you can use their actual faces on any marketing you do. (Even at a glance, families will understand that their kids will meet the characters, verses just be attending a themed party.)

Set Up Needed: Mascot actors need to be in shade or indoors during the hot evenings of August, as well as have access to a private dressing room or break room for events over 45min. Learn more about mascot safety here.

Above: our face painter Bella painting at 3rd Ave‘s National Night Out event in Burlington, MA!

2. Face Painting & Balloon Twisting

At-A-Glance: Hire face painters and balloon twisters for free community entertainment that’s sure to attract a crowd.

Ages: Toddlers – Tweens

Guests Per Hour: In our experience, the type of face painter (and face paint designs) make a huge difference.

• A volunteer face painter can typically only get through around 10-15 faces per hour, even with simple designs
• A professional face painter can typically get through 12-15 impressive “full face” designs per hour
• Our custom speedy face menu can get through 20-30 guests per hour.

The same is true with balloon twisting. We suggest a professional twister with a simplified menu to get through 20-30 guests per hour, verses the 10 or so balloon dogs a free volunteer can make.

Marketing Considerations: Free face painting and balloon twisting is probably THE best way to draw a crowd. Ask your artists for photos of their work to use on your social media, and in turn ask them if they can promote your free event on their own social media.

Set Up Needed: Face painters typically require 1 table and 2 chairs each. Balloon twisters usually require 1 table and 1 chair. Given that it’s August, make sure you set them up in the shade (with their line in the shade as well) to prevent any medical emergencies while children are waiting in line.

3. Strolling Magic

At-A-Glance: Hire a family-friendly entertainer to stroll through your crowd and entertain with a touch of magic.

Ages: Prek – Adult

Guests Per Hour: Typically strolling magicians can get through around 6-10 groups per hour, a group consisting of a family, a segment of a line waiting for food, or any other cluster of people.

Marketing Considerations: Magic is wonderful, but doesn’t tend to draw as many families as face painting or balloon twisting. To get the most bang for your buck, ask your magician if they can share the free event on their social media or email list.

Set Up Needed: Typically a magician just needs a place to store extra props and a water bottle, even if that’s just their car parked near by.

4. Caricatures Ideas for National Night Out

At-A-Glance: These bucket-list worthy cartoons of your party guests are always the most popular station at any event.

Ages: Tween – Adult

Guests Per Hour: 6-10 faces per hour per caricature artist, so you’ll likely want to hire multiple artists.

Marketing Considerations: Caricatures can draw a good crowd for an event, but the real marketing magic can be in getting custom caricature paper created. Families will keep these forever and often hang them in their houses, so your department can make an impact by getting your name and logo front and center.

Set Up Needed: Each caricature artist will need 1 table and 3 chairs (1 chair for them and 2 for guests since couple caricatures are so popular). Make sure this is in the shade because caricature lines can be long and in August we don’t want anyone to faint in the direct sun!

5. DJs

At-A-Glance: Having a DJ can set a great ambiance for your event, but more importantly a professional DJ can also become a much-needed Master of Ceremonies to help advertise different activities, host games, or run giveaways.

Ages: All Ages

Guests Per Hour: Your whole event!

Marketing Considerations: While a DJ typically won’t draw a crowd by themselves, you can use your DJ to make announcements for community advertising partners to sweeten your partnership packages. If you’re considering doing tiered community sponsorships, use our DJ’s ability to make announcements in one of the higher tiers available to local businesses who help make your event a success.

Set Up Needed: DJ equipment will need to be in the shade and have access to a 3-pronged, grounded outlet. (Make sure their set up is close enough to an outlet so no one will trip over any cables!)

5 In-House National Night Out Entertainment Ideas

National Night Out Entertainment Ideas Using Things You Already Have!

1. K9 Unit Meet & Greet

Whether it’s a petting station or a station where kids can learn how to appropriately interact with working dogs, animals are always a huge draw for families.

2. Touch a Truck with the Fire Department

Team up with a local fire station to bring out one of their trucks and to meet and greet with one of their fire fighters in their gear.

(Bonus points: ask them for some demonstrative equipment for the next idea!)

Above: a demonstration of what a themed photo booth prop table can look like. This was for one of our corporate clients, but for your National Night Out you can use odds and ends from your department.

3. Dress Up DIY Photo Station

Gather up any demonstration handcuffs, uniforms, hats, badges, or anythings else around your department to create a photo booth prop table. Even better, ask EMTs or Fire if they can add anything else.

This station can go a lot more smoothly with a professional photo booth attendant and set up, but you can also make it a selfie station with a volunteer.

4. Hands-On Siren Demonstrations

Far away from the main event, park a police cruiser and invite kids one at a time to try the sirens!

(Just make sure it’s far, far away from the main event. While there sirens may be just background noise to you, there will be families with young and autistic children that may need to leave if your party is too noisy!)

5. FREE Police Badge Sticker Crafts (Above)

Print out the above FREE craft on label paper. Invite families to color, cut out, and stick their DIY police badges onto themselves!

3 Community Building & Marketing National Night Out Entertainment Ideas

1. Have community members sponsor event entertainment booths

If you’re not sure that entertainment is in your budget, talk to local banks, daycares, grocery stores, cafes, or real estate agents about sponsoring an entertainment booth.

Place the free entertainment at their booth, with the advantage to them that while families are waiting in the line their sales team can talk to waiting parents or hand out promotional materials.

2. Work with the local food pantry or churches to rally donations

Do good in your community by teaming up with community members to collect food for pantries.

This has a triple advantage: a reason for families to come, an activity anyone can participate in, and more marketing partners to get the word out about your event.

3. Work with local outdoor shopping centers to host your National Night Out

In our experience, outdoor shopping centers often have designated spaces for community programming and are often looking for community members to use those spaces.

Talk to a local outdoor shopping center about potentially teaming up and hosting your event. Again: the more community members you team up with, the more families on your collective social media and email lists.

Tips for Making Your National Night Out Entertainment Ideas Work For You

1. Use “high value” entertainment to lead your marketing. Your “why” is to meet your community members. But their “why” is likely not to meet you–it’s likely to get their kids out of the house with something for free. Using entertainment as a marketing hook is a great idea.

2. Remember that free volunteers may struggle with high volume events. If you can get free volunteers, that’s awesome. But especially for “line” activities like face painting and balloon twisting, you’ll need more than you think you will. Even with simple designs, volunteers doing something they’re not used to will struggle with a large event (we’ve seen this plenty of times).

3. Don’t assume families can pay for food, entertainment, or experiences at your National Night Out. If you want to bring in food trucks that may be a great option for you, but regardless of your community don’t bring in a lower tier of free activities (like touch a truck and a craft station) and a paid tier of nicer activities (like face painting or caricatures). Don’t leave out kids whose parents can’t afford to pay for activities because you want to pass on your event costs to guests. This may be an attendance boost one year, but will turn families away from your event for good going forward.

If you’re looking for event entertainment ideas for ABA Centers, here is our list of the top 5 ideas we’ve seen work well for our ABA Center clients!

Kaleidoscope has been serving ABA Centers in CT, MA, RI, and NH for close to a decade and works with an accessibility & inclusion consultant to make sure that our artists know how to modify and adapt performances for all children at every event–including at ABA Centers! Entertainment and programming ideas only work if they work for everyone, and Kaleidoscope is committed to making sure that’s the case.

5 Event Entertainment Ideas for ABA Centers

1. Face Painting and Balloon Twisting: Together and with Modifications

At A Glance: Face painting and balloon twisting are classic kids entertainment that are popular with all ages.

We Love It For:

• Open houses (listing “free face painting and balloon twisting” are great magnets for new families)
• Family days (especially with siblings of ABA clients who would enjoy being included)
• RBT appreciation days (even adults love face painting and balloon twisting)

Accessibility Problems: Children may not want to be touched by a stranger (or at all) or may be fearful of balloon textures or noises.

Accessibility Solutions: Make sure you hire artists who can do and bring both face painting and balloon twisting together so children can pick which art they can tolerate. If the station has more choices, more children can participate.

2. Mascot Visits

At A Glance: A favorite cartoon character can come visit your ABA center.

We Love It For:

• Special evenings (parents night out, family celebrations)
• Camp weeks (featuring a different character on different days)

Accessibility Problems: We’ve actually found that children in ABA centers prefer mascot visits to “face characters” (like princesses or super heroes), so this programming idea may be an accessibility solution to itself. However, some children are still nervous about tall mascots walking towards them.

Accessibility Solutions: Have a meet and greet room where children can choose to approach the mascots instead of having mascots walk into the center of your ABA Center. This room can also double as a changing room for your mascot actor, but is a better contained space for sensitive kids and offers them entertainment which they can consent to participate in. (For very shy kids who are fearful of adults, this can be one of our favorite Event Entertainment Ideas for ABA Centers with the right accomodations.)

3. Versatile Magic Shows

At A Glance: A sensory-friendly magic show for young children with lots of silliness that doesn’t require a long attention span!

We Love It For:

• Seated programming for vacation camps or special events
• Marketing added value to parents choosing between centers
• Indoor programming

Accessibility Problems: Children may not be able to sit down for a full 30min show, may not be able to tolerate loud noises or unexpected movements, or may not be able to follow longer magic show plots.

Accessibility Solutions: Make sure your magician can:

• come with more tricks than they typically need,
• can pivot to close-up magic if the group isn’t able to sit and watch the show,
• is able to moderate their volume and the volume of any tricks,
• and can perform their show without on-stage participants.

In general, we’ve found that shows are great event entertainment ideas for ABA centers only if the entertainers can pivot. Every group is different, but if an entertainer is expecting the same responses in your center that they do at a neurotypical birthday party, it can be a disengaging experience for all.

4. Bubble Shows (with Bubble Play)

At A Glance: A bubble performance and bubble play station are a great mix of seated entertainment and sensory play that can be assessable to many children with different play styles.

We Love It For:

• Outdoor ABA center summer camp programming and entertainment ideas
• Low-sensory splash day alternative programming
• All-ages hands-on entertainment

Accessibility Problems: ABA clients may not be able to sit for a full show, even if the show is modified for young children. Other children may not enjoy the sensory experience of bubble liquid on their hands.

Accessibility Solutions: Make sure your bubble artist can pivot to a bubble play sensory station with the kids if they’re unable to sit and watch the full show. Ask your bubble artist if they’re able to bring wands of contained bubble liquid for children who don’t want to free play with bubble wands and open trays of liquid.

5. Science Shows (with Slime Lab)

At A Glance: If your ABA center loves shows, a kids’ science show can be a great alternative to magic or bubbles.

We Love It For:

• Educational programming ideas for ABA centers
• Themed camp weeks

Accessibility Problems: Like our other shows, kids may not be able to follow a longer plot of a show or sit for a full 30min show.

Accessibility Solutions: We love the combination of a science show with a slime lab to entertain both children who are higher energy and lower energy; hands on or shy. As long as your science show performer understands that different children may be more or less drawn to different aspects of the performance, they can find some way to engage everyone.

Bonus: Event Entertainment Ideas for ABA Centers We DON’T Recommend!

After a decade of providing accessible entertainment and programming for ABA centers, here are the top Event Entertainment Ideas for ABA Centers we don’t recommend.

1. Caricatures. We love them, but young or high energy children often struggle to sit still long enough for it to work (and often the pay out for sitting still isn’t worth the struggle!)
2. Stilt walkers. These are fun for huge events, but often intimidating for young children of any ability (and unpredictable movement or behavior near a stilt walker can be dangerous for everyone).
3. Hair art. Hair art can be a great alternative to face painting for a festival atmosphere, but can often be harder for parents to remove than face painting, especially if their children already struggle with bath time.
4. Tarot or psychic services. We don’t perform this type of entertainment for any group under 16, as they don’t understand the difference between metaphor or story telling and facts.

3 Tips for Working With Vendors for Event Entertainment Ideas for ABA Centers

Kaleidoscope is committed to the entertainment and fun of kids of all abilities, with an accessibility & inclusion consultant on our team; ethical labor practices that include accommodations for artists with invisible disabilities; and required internal trainings so that everyone on our team is both the best performer they can be and the safest adult to all children.

However, if your center is not located in New England (we serve all of CT, MA, RI, NH, and most of VT and ME) then here are our tips for making sure that your entertainment and programming vendors can adapt their ideas to your ABA center.

1. Make sure they understand what autism and an ABA Center is.

Don’t assume they know as much as you–even the basics.

When sending an introductory email to an entertainer, explain the demographic of your center and what your needs are (not just their pricing and availability).

2. Ask what entertainment or programming modifications they can prepare.

If your entertainer does have an idea about autism or ABA, still explicitly ask what modifications they can make for common problems like touch aversion, noise sensitivity, communication difficulties, or unpredictable movements/behavior.

3. Ask if they can prepare backup or alternative entertainment or programming.

Can your entertainer bring more than what you’ve hired them for if your original programming or entertainment idea for ABA centers doesn’t work?

Many can, so in your research make sure this is possible.