KIDS' PARTIES
Our family has evolved it’s own tradition for children’s parties over the years. Working to a tight budget we’ve found ways of entertaining the children to their satisfaction without spending a fortune on hiring venues and entertainers. The main outline is as follows:
- Try to hold the party at home
- Go for simple home-made party food (see Recipes Page)
- Bake the cake yourself. Half the fun is in the creation of the cake!
- Create a treasure hunt with inexpensive treasure as the take home gift for the party children
- Make home-made party decorations and get your children involved
At Home
Prepare your home for the party. Ask your child if they have any special toys that they are not happy to share and then put them away out of sight. They can relax and enjoy themselves better if they don’t feel obliged to defend their favourite possessions. (Do the same with anything breakable of yours too!). Put out in strategic places toys that can be shared – toy cars, wooden blocks, tea sets. If you have a sand pit, put buckets, spades and old containers out there. Put out paper and crayons. With a selection of toys at hand the children should be quite happy playing without too much organisation. Keep a few games up your sleeve in case they get restless and need distraction but we usually have one main activity – a treasure hunt, before a sit down birthday tea.
Party Food
I’m a firm believer in keeping sweets and sugary snacks to a minimum at parties. Ever since my son threw up marshmallows all over the car, after going to a friends party, I can see the point of filling them up with savoury, relatively nutritious things first before letting them loose on the cake and the rest.
Start off by putting out savoury snacks: a variety of small sandwiches, ready salted potato crisps, cheese biscuits (see Recipes Page), cocktail sausages, even carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes and cucumber. Then bring out sweet biscuits and of course the cake. This way the sugar rage is minimised and the kids get some nutrients in first! If you expect some parents to stay have a separate adult cake as well, though they will probably be happy to eat the sandwiches too.
Having a sit down tea contains the mess and crumbs to one area and focuses the kids’ attention on the food. If you don’t have enough chairs you can put out picnic blankets for the children to sit on either in the garden if the weather is good enough or in the middle of the floor (the blankets can then be picked up and shaken outside and half your clear up is done!). The food can be close by on a table that they can reach. Provide paper plates to save on washing up.
The older the children are the more food seems to be required, as I discovered at my son’s eighth birthday party – two platefuls of sandwiches were hoovered up in minutes and I had to make another plateful quickly. Younger children are often too busy playing to want to eat much and anyway have smaller appetites.
The Birthday Cake
This CAN be home-made and you don’t have to be a patisserie chef to make one. Find a recipe that you like for a chocolate cake or plain sponge cake. Read Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat
for a useful recipe and advice too. Cover in butter icing then let the kids help decorate it with lavish amounts of Smarties or M&Ms, silver balls and sprinkles. You can make a big number for their age or their initial with Smarties as a main motif or just be mad and random. The only essential thing is that when cut each slice has enough Smarties on! It’ll look gaudy and fun, the kids will love that they helped decorate and it will taste a whole lot better than a bought cake which tends to be sickly sweet.Party Games
The traditional party games can keep kids busy for a while, if you feel like organising them. The classics: musical statues, musical bumps, musical chairs need someone to man the music and you have to keep the kids who are ‘out’ happy. Be warned though they also bring out the competitive element, which can disrupt the happy harmony of the party and younger children can find it too much! Pass the parcel works as long as there are little gifts between each layer and you cleverly manage the music so that each child gets one. Games that don’t involve winners and prizes are easier for younger children: ‘Grandmother’s Footsteps’ is a good one; so is ‘What’s the Time Mr Wolf’. Having a craft activity as a focus can also work well, then the kids have something to take home with them too. See the Party Decorations page for some paper craft ideas. Remember too that kids can be quite happy for hours just playing. You don’t have to do any more than provide a birthday cake for it to be a birthday party!
Limit the numbers of kids invited to the party for young children. Up till the age of four large parties are often too bewildering for the birthday child to enjoy. Five and six year olds often like to be able to invite their whole class. Seven years up can often choose a smaller number of particular friends – my son has decided that eight is the right number of children for his party plus his younger sisters of course. Having said that the kindergarten years have produced up to 24 children for a party.
If you don’t have a garden and the time of year is right, consider a picnic in the park party for large numbers. This works best if children are accompanied by a parent, you don’t want to be in sole charge of 24 small children in a large open space!
My oldest child is about to be eight, so I don’t have any more advice from personal experience for older children’s parties. For boys though I can see the emphasis moving towards having some sort of physical activity as the focus. The treasure hunt still works if you have space to run and climb, ball games work well. It helps to have smaller numbers of particular friends too at this stage. I seem to remember from my childhood that the party was replaced by a special outing with one or two friends as I got older. We’ll see what happens in our family.
Party Decorations
Here are some suggestions for home-made party decorations for those who have time at home with their children and enjoy kid’s crafts. (Otherwise look at links to sites where you can buy themed party packs with all the party decorations, tableware and party packs you need.)
Home-made party decorations will keep your children busy for a few days before the party and save money, which can be better spent on presents and food. For the kids much fun is had in the preparation for a party and the more things they can do to help the more they feel a part of it – setting them to work on the decoration both involves them and leaves you free for getting the food ready. Younger children will need more help from you, so make sure you have time to help cut and stick, otherwise frustration could set in on both sides, but they will be extra proud of their achievements.
All sorts of paper shapes coloured with wax crayons or sprayed silver or gold can be hung above the party table as a series of mobiles or along a ‘washing line’ of silver cord or else you can stick them all over the doors and windows. Choose a simple shape that ties in with the party theme or your child’s favourite animal – trace the shape multiple times onto thick paper or thin card and cut out. Look below for photos and other ideas.
Balloons are essential party decorations for the primary school age child. Instead of buying expensive decorated ones get plain ones and let the children draw or write on them in marker pens.
Some of these party decorations can be used as a kids crafts activity at the party. Cut out all the shapes beforehand, have a good supply of wax crayons and glitter and glue (in stick form is least messy) and write each child’s name on the finished product so they can take it home at the end of the party.
Remember that the party decorations don’t need to be perfectly co-ordinated, styled or worthy of a magazine shoot. The child guests won’t notice, the adults will be impressed at your creativity and give you a medal in the Supermum stakes. Anyway it is your child’s party and if he or she thinks they look great that is what matters.
I’ll risk being controversial here and say that decorations aren’t essential, though they do make everything look festive, but in my experience most kids won’t even notice if there aren’t any. You could just do one big bunch of balloons. Or for example, if you’re doing a cowboy and Indian party, drape blankets over a few poles to make a tepee, that is enough to create an ambience. If you have limited time, energy or resources, concentrate on the food rather.
Home-made Party Decorations & Kids Crafts
Cut out bird shapes, with pleated wings of crepe paper.
Paper snowflakes sprayed silver (did you make these as a child? A circle or square folded in half once, then again, then once more, cut small shapes out down the two folded edges and then unfold to reveal a miraculous snowflake.)
Paper stars sprinkled with glitter
Eggs, blown then decorated and hung on a tree.
Tissue paper butterflies, folded together with a pipe cleaner body.
Great Party Books
Complete Party Planner
by Annabel Karmel
Kids' Party Games & Activities
by Penny Warner
Einsteins Science Parties
by Shar Levine & Allison Grafton
by John E. Thomas, Danita Pagel, Danita Thomas
