A few tips for the “Location: Our House Birthday Party”.
How do you fill the time?
- Combine activities. Have the child make their loot bag item; be it a hand print on an art canvas, a decorated t-shirt, a pot & seeds combo, a painted bird house, or other craft. (e-mail Parent Club if you need more ideas!)
- Make food an activity. Decorate cupcakes, make individual pizzas, bead fruit loop necklaces.
- Update the ol’ skool. Enjoy games of “old” like musical chairs (update it by using hoola hoops to stand in), duck, duck, goose (update to Dora, Boots, Swiper), Egg race (use those plastic easter eggs you just bought in April), pass the package (give newspaper or flyers a 2nd life by wrapping layers)
- Set up stations. Have a book nook, a dress-up corner, a lego land…and if possible keep the food to one area.
Keep the time to two hours. If the kids are young; write on the invitations that there will be a tea/coffee bar for the parents (a bit of an incentive to stay). If parents are dropping off their children; have a clipboard near the door for parents to write down their cell phone numbers.
AT my sons fourth birthday we made decorated “binoculars” I made them ahead of time by stapilng together two TP rolls and adding a string, on the string I had attached a tag to write the childs name on. A bunch of stickers and fancy metallic markers and we were all set! The next year we made crowns and tieras. My husband cut out the party hats from pieces of bristol board and we bought a bunch of shiny beads and stickers from the dollar store and of course more markers!Each year we made our own “pin the something on the something” game, first year was stick the spider on the web, my son drew the big spider web himself and the year after it was stick the spaceship on the solar system, it is amazing how happy the girls were to fine we had made them pink and purple spiders and space ships!!