Having a party for kids is fun,
but one of the biggest challenges is keeping them busy. You can keep your young
party-goers happy with a variety of activities, crafts and games. These ideas
can also be used to keep kids busy at family gatherings or holiday parties with
both kids and adults.
Arrival
The perfect time for an activity
is when the guests first arrive, especially if there are going to be a lot of
people who don’t know each other. This is great for the parent helpers so they
can learn all the kids’ names.
You could have the kids decorate
a name tag or party hat after you take their jacket and present. Another fun
idea is to have each guest sign and draw a picture on a large birthday card
poster, which can be made from colorful poster board.
Activity/Craft Centers
You can have as many or as few of
these as you have room for. The centers should be available to the kids to use
at any time during the party. The centers can offer crafts, coloring, puzzles, or
toys like building blocks or dollhouse that the kids can play on their own or
with minimal adult guidance.
Crafts, which can also serve as
goodie bag items, should be easy for all your guests to do on their own. It is
a good idea to avoid crafts that require a lot of gluing, which is messy and
frustrating as you wait for the glue to dry. If you’re going to be using
markers or paint, offer your guests the washable varieties so clothes don’t get
stained.
Crafts can include sand art, pipe
cleaners, beads and cord for necklaces, paper airplanes or dolls, door knob
hangers, decorating picture frames, coloring goodie bags, decorating T-shirts
or pillowcases, and spin art. You can find a variety of simple crafts that
require little to no adult supervision and are inexpensive to make for kids
ages 3-7 at www.kidsholidaycrafts.com.
Another popular activity for kids
is face painting. You can buy books that come with face painting kits that show
you how to draw simple animals. If you don’t feel comfortable doing the face
painting, you could call on the artistic talents of a parent helper or a high
school art student.
Games
There are a wide range of games
you can play, inside or outside, that can be modified to suit the age level of
your guests or the party theme. Many popular themes based on TV shows or movies
often have theme-related games you can buy.
Your guest would get tickets that
can be redeemed for prizes at the end of the party. Every kid would get one
ticket for participating in the game then the winner would get three tickets,
second place would get two and third place would get one ticket. You can either
make the tickets on your computer or purchase them at a party store.
If your party is indoors because
of the weather or season there are still a wide range of games you can play.
Some fun games are pin the tail on the donkey (or have it match the theme of
your party, for example pin the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder), scavenger
hunts, 20 questions, bean bag toss, ring toss, bingo, duck duck goose, guessing
games or Simon Says.
If you’re lucky enough to be able
to have your party outside you have even more choices for games. You can use
the kiddie pool for fishing games, a coin toss (try to get the coins in the
floating pie tins) or duck pond. You could also play musical chairs, do an
obstacle course, relay races, tug of war, water balloons or a piñata.
Prizes
Prizes for games can be purchased
at dollar stores, party stores or catalogs like the Oriental Trading Company.
The prizes offered will depend on the ages of your guests and how the kids will
be winning them. The prizes for games would be in addition to a goodie bag.
For ticket redemption you could
have items like plastic bracelets/cars or pieces of candy for one ticket, small
dolls or beanbag animals for five tickets, and so on. Make sure you have enough
prizes for the number of tickets you’ll be giving out. Any prizes not chosen
can be raffled off or saved for the next party.
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