Ideas for great birthday party activities
All you need to throw the best Birthday Party for your toddler and pre-schooler at home
Fun Activities for My Kid's Birthday Party
Discover simple recipes for fun and engaging age-appropriate group activities that will captivate and entertain your tiny birthday guests throughout the entire birthday party.
Kids' Birthday Gifts and Party Bags
Original ideas for gifts and remarkable souvenirs that will amaze your child's friends.
Best Books for Planning my Kids' Birthday Party
Reviews of inspiring and remarkable books that will help any of your children's birthday party planning for years to come.
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How to throw a great kid's birthday party?
Your child’s birthday is coming soon? You want to throw a great and memorable party where you know that his or her little friends will have a great time and be entertained during the whole time?
Here, I share my experience as an early childhood educator on how to organize the birthday party you are dreaming for your toddler or preschooler. I will guide you step by step into what to consider and how to organize everything when planning an amazing day for your kid.
In the rest of the site, you will find my own recipes for group activities arranged into age categories, ideas for gifts and party bags, as well as great reading material should you want to know more.
Where shall we hold my child's birthday party?
Having a birthday party at home will make it special, intimate and memorable. Why? Because your home is your safe place, where both your child and yourself feel happy and calm. Your family and friends will see your unique way of living. That’s a magical opportunity to share with them who you are and what are the things you like and appreciate the most. There are other benefits of hosting your child’s party at your home such as the price. There is no hiring cost. It doesn’t matter what the weather is like. There is a toilet at hand. Food won’t be transported. And you can be kind to the environment by avoiding using disposable plastic plates and cups.
However, it is important to ask yourself if you will have enough space to host the amount of guests you would like to invite. If your home is small and you don’t have a backyard or terrace, then going to a local park could be a great place. Children are excited about being with their friends, playing and eating cake. Sometimes we as parent have higher expectations when in reality children find many ways to get busy and creative within simple things.
Who should you invite?
You might have difficulties to decide who should be invited to your child’s birthday party. Should you invite the neighbor’s children or all the kids from their class at school?
Put yourself in your little one’s shoes. After all it’s their party, not yours. Think about how special it would be for them to enjoy that great day with his closest friends and family?
Hosting a party at your place makes friendship grow because you are opening the door of your home and creating memories.
How many children can I invite?
In all the good books that I have read about birthday parties, experts say that the number of guest should be the same as your child’s age plus one.
In the children’s parties book, Rose Hammier and Charlotte Packer say that when it comes to the number of children for the age group of 3 to 5 years-old 6 to 8 kids in total work best.
In the children’s party book, Anne and Peter Thomas talk about how the character of the birthday child is an important factor. “Some children are quiet and introverted. They tend to sit in a corner in a crowd and not say anything. They hardly have few friends and hardly play with other children…At the other extreme is the child who is everybody’s friend and wants to invite everyone to their birthday party”.
When my son turned 3, I had two groups of mums with kids the same age as my child. I decided to do two separated birthday celebrations at home. Just because, otherwise, I was going to have around 14 children’s playing around my backyard. At the end, I planned for each party 7 sensory activities and all children were busy and engaged in all the duration of the party.
When should we hold a party?
Would you like to host a party the same day of your child’s birthday? Or you rather do it another day? Do you have any family traditions to honor your child’s anniversary?
I like to do my child’s birthday party the weekend after his day or birth. If his birthday happens to be on a weekend then I will do it on that day.
What is the best time to host a child's birthday party?
Better to have a rested toddler or preschooler than a child who is cranky or tired. Stick to your son or daughter’s routine. If your child is under 3 and they have a nap at a certain time of the day, honor that and plan the birthday party time when he or she is the most attentive and responsive.
When to send invitations?
Sending invitations 4 weeks in advance before the day of the party gives family and friends time to get organized and schedule for the big day. It also gives you a time-frame for looking or making your own decorations, deciding about food and the cake and preparing for the activities. But don’t do it too much before that as people might just forget!
How to send the invitations?
This is not a question we would have asked just a few decades ago. But now we have reasons to wonder!
Sending invitations by text message is the quickest and easiest ways that I found to make people know you are inviting them. If your child is attending kindergarten you could ask your child’s teacher to give directly to parents the hard copy of the invitations.
Inside or outside?
Whether or not it is winter, summer, fall/autumn or spring, it is always good for children to get some fresh air and a bit of space to feel the grass, touch a tree or see some greenery. If you live in a house with a backyard, it is always good to have activities where children can get messy and you don’t worry too much about cleaning. For example, in a hot and summery day, children playing with water outdoors is much easier to handle than having to worry about wet and slippery floors.
How long should a birthday party last?
For children between the ages of 1 and 5, it is recommended to keep to the duration of a party between 1 and 1½ hours. This broken-down schedule can roughly be:
- 15 minutes to welcome everyone. It is a good time to show everyone where the toilet is
- 35 minutes to engage in games and fun activities
-
20 minutes for food and drinks
- 5 minutes to tidy up before…
- 15 minutes for singing happy birthday and eat the cake
How to engage kids at a birthday party at home?
To keep your kids engaged at a birthday party at home, you have to provide a selection of experiences where children fully immerse all their senses into hand-ons activities and games. Examples of such activities are:
- Seeing, smelling and touching a scent rainbow colored oats in a sensory bin where children are scooping and pouring oats into containers
- Tasting a delicious fruit kebabs or cup-cake
- Hearing festive music and clapping hands at the rhythm of music
- Dancing and moving all body-parts
- Playing with some chia seed slime
- Posting jumbo popsicles or big pompoms into a box.
Overall, it is basically playing, eating and dancing. In this site we cover the playing side of things.