OS birthday party

mum2kathryn

Hi,

Not sure if this should be under OS, celebrations or family but here seems as good as place as any.

Its my daughter's 3rd birthday in about 6 weeks and we want to hold an 'old style' birthday party for her, eg at home not a wacky warehouse, no outside entertainer or caterer.

I'm hoping the weather will oblige and we'll be able to have it in the garden, but does anyone have any good ideas for food, games and party bags? And what time of day is best, and what sort of 'schedule' eg food half way through or near the end?

Hmm, thought it would be quite easy until I started thinking about the details....

Any thoughts appreciated!

Crazychik

Right, here goes -

Time - usually about meal time (ish) like 12-2pm or 3-5, so when you've had 45 mins of games then allow 1/2 hour (ish) for the meal, then the remainder of time for more games!
I normally find from experience kids are excited to eat, so dont go over board with food
Keep it simple - sandwiches, mini pizza, chicken dippers (these are great served hot/warm even better cos your doing this at home) cocktail sausages,
Bare it in mind, they are 3yr olds, so try and make the food edible to their age requirements. Ask parents for some advise what food their little one likes (might give you an idea what to supply) quavers, wotsits, jam tarts, buns, etc. You can be really adventerous with making sweets to make it look "wow"

I will be along with some ideas shortly.

Games - hold on, let me find my party list of games I had for my DD party
and I'll come back to you

Crazychik

Games to Play

2 teams, line up, pass balloon over head to person behind, person then has to pass through their legs to the person behind them - and so on until the end of the line. Up and over all along
The last person at the end - then has to run to the front of the line with and stand with the balloon on his/her head. First team to complete this is the winner - Might need adult help

Hedgehogs - walk - skip - hop - jump around the room (garden), when the music stops, all children have to curl up in a ball on the floor burying their heads down and hands over their heads and closing eyes. Adult walks around the children, and places a blanket over a child. When told to open their eyes - the kids have to guess who's under the blanket. Winner guesses correctly

musical hats. buy or borrow all sorts of hats..policeman, fireman, beret, woolly hat, crown etc etc. They pass the hats around like pass the parcel and when the music stops they put the hat on. Make some big cards with a picture of each hat on or just simply write the type of hat on a card - when the music has stopped pick a card randomly (from behind you back is a good idea) and whoever is wearing the hat that matches the picture gets a prize. Dont do this for too long as they become fed up after a while.

Pass The Parcel

Musical Chairs

Best Dancer Boy and Girl

Crazychik

Traffic light jelly - you need clear plastic cups for this
Buy lime, lemon & strawberry jelly, make up the lime jelly first, pour small amount into the plastic cup (about 1cm) leave to set, when set, then add the yellow jelly, and so on until the red is complete and set. You could put smarties or other sweets inbetween layers, (carefull for little ones not to choke) Top off with a squirt of cream with some hundreds & thousands

bee cakes! buy the small swiss roll (finger size) vanilla & chocolate, and chocolate spread, & smarties
slice each roll into 4 pieces, spread the choc spread on the flat side of one of the pieces, then sandwich it together with another, alternate vanilla,choc,vanilla & choc, spreading choc spread in between, for the face put choc spread on the end and 2 smarties for eyes. You can also use sugar/rice paper and cut to shape for the wings and place those inbetween the 1st layer after the eyes! They look great and kids love em!

Cornflake or rice crispie choc buns decorated with mini marshmallows

Marshmallows on cocktail stick (again be carefull with the little ones) and also put chopped banana & apple - again - alternating the variety

Crazychik

Part bags

anything from small colouring or activity books & pencils, balloon, bubbles,
Tesco's do a good selection of party bag toys.

Few suitable sweets, and of course a bit of the birthday cake!

If I can think of anything else, I will add

Happy birthday to DD by the way! And I hope the weather stays fine for her to have in the garden.

You could have a mini - sports day - ie egg n spoon race etc....

Fizog

From experience if you have a garden and it is a nice day I would let them run off steam for 20 mins to half an hour. A few balloons to play with.... they probably won't need much to eat, (too excited), I'd go for sandwiches, finger food- crudities, a few crisps, squash and water, fairy cakes, biscuits. Go for paper plates and disposable cups..organise tea for half way through the party. At 3 I'd say two and a half hours is enough, have a few games for them - pin the tail on the donkey, pass the parcel, musical bumps, sleeping lions!!! At three organised games need lots of explaining and guidance.
Make sure everyone sits down for tea for half an hour then you can bring on the Happy birthday cake. A communal sing song or dance time round the cd player should take you through to home time when you will curse the parents who don't collect on time.
Party bags should contain a piece of cake, a small toy/puzzle/bottle of bubbles and a few sweets. A balloon each to go home with.... good luck

HopeElizzy

Hi,
We went to a lovely OS party last week. :j

My friends little girl was 2yo and they had a teddy bears picnic. Every child was asked to bring their teddy with them. Luckily the weather was fine and the picnic was held outside though it probably would have worked inside as well.

They had honey sandwiches cut into teddy shapes with a biscuit cutter, pom bear crisps (teddy shaped), teddy shaped biscuits and the usual cherry toms, mini sausages, fairy cakes etc.

There were 8 children ranging from 18mths to 5yo and they entertained themselves alot of the time as the hostess had put plenty of garden toys out. She also did three rounds of pass the parcel which meant all the children had something from one of the layers and/or the main prize in the middle.

It was very relaxed and my 2 little ones enjoyed it. Make sure you cater for the little ones don't pander to the grown-ups - healthy stuff is good for day-to-day eating but jam sandwiches and cake won't harm them for a day. Don't feel you have to impress the other mummies because you need to enjoy the day as well - I felt miserable when I tried to do that for my 2's birthday party. I really didn't feel like I got to enjoy the day with the kids.

Hope some of this ramble helps and that you both enjoy the party!

lindab15

Hi all - love this thread. My two daughter's have had OS parties for a few years now, since we moved to a house with a reasonable sized garden.

Ebay can be great for job-lots of suitable party bag fillers, and you can pick up some great prizes in pound shops (pack of 12 glittery pencils etc) and places like 'the Works' or 'Book Depot'. Hawkin are also good for some really unusual stuff and have a 'pocket money' section which is more reasonable, although generally they're a bit pricier.

I cheat a bit and fork out for a bouncy castle (but get a good deal 'cos we use the same guy every year - twice a year now !!) but certainly get our money's worth as every kid in the street gets a go and we finish off with Grandmas & Grandad's on it too, after the visitors have gone !!

Otherwise, lots of ordinary games and usually fairly basic / home made food (mine like like cream cheese and ham spirals - flat bread spread with cream cheese / dairylea, layer of ham, rolled up (in tinfoil) and chilled then sliced like a swiss roll).

I've threatened my eldest with being too old for this sort of party nowadays, but she insisted and we had a garden full of 12 and 13-year olds last year - she tells me they raved about it at school afterwards and she now has a 'waiting list' of people asking can they come to her pary next year !!

Just make sure the games are age - suitable : very simple for little ones, as suggested above (and 2 hours max, I'd say - with plenty of adult helpers and elastoplast !).

I had to adapt for pre-teens the last year or so, and we did 'Mummies' with teams of 3 and lots of cheap toilet rolls (best-wrapped Mummy won - great laugh) and 'designers', where I'd collected boxes of various cheap materials like coloured bin liners, newspaper, ribbon and tape, cheap sellotape, paper plates etc, gave each 'team' a box and asked them to produce the best designer outfit in 20 minutes. They loved that one - got very creative ! We took photos of each team and added a photo to their 'thank you' letters afterwards !

Sorry - rambled a bit and those games more relevant for older children.

There's a good book called 'I'm bored' which has loads of ideas for games - will see if there's some games suitable for younger children and post again !

Good luck !

squeaky

mum2kathryn wrote: »

Hi,

Not sure if this should be under OS, celebrations or family but here seems as good as place as any.

Celebrations or Family would be better.

Both have sets of threads specifically for money saving ideas on various birthdays.

So please pick one and I'll move your thread across

mossstar

We just did our 6 year olds party, and by necessity it had to be 'old style'

Firstly, it was 1.5 hours - PLENTY long enough (no time for anyone to get too tired). We had it at 'tea' time (4pm) and told the parents that we'd serve pizza and sausages and all the good stuff (all hm of course) so they wouldn't have to feed them that evening (might as well make it easy for them too!). AND we only had 6 kids (i've always held to the '1 when they're 1' '2 when they're 2' 3 when they're 3' thing, and it's always worked beautifully!).


I printed off lots and lots of games from the web, and did a big donkey on some recycled cardboard for 'pin the tail on the donkey' etc... but in reality we only really needed about 5 games. We stayed away from the ones liable to cause upset (like pass the parcel, which i remember having me in all sorts of knots when I was younger (highly excitable!)) and stuck with team games and racing about (my dp's a teacher which made things easier, but any bloke with a whistle is a GOOD THING in these situations! ha ha).

6 year old and i made plain biscuits beforehand and the main activity of the party was decorating these with some brightly coloured icing that i'd got together with some sweeties and hundreds and thousands and what have you.

These went into their 'party bags', which i sewed the night before from $2 of kids fabric with spacemen on! (that's about a pound!)... along with jokes that ds1 and I came up with, a pencil and pad and some more cheap sweeties, and were quite enough (i'm really against the whole 'buy cheap rubbish from sweatshops and create more landfill' thing, but it's SO hard to not do these things, I know).

At the end of tea we had a huge choc cake with candles and jelly and icecream and JUST as we were starting to wilt the parents turned up to collect them all! :rotfl: it was a good friend of mine who told me NEVER to have more than 1.5 hours and i have to say i LOVED her for it! :rotfl:

Have fun! (we did, in spite me sounding like a right old curmudgeon)

Steph xx

mossstar

squeaky wrote: »

Celebrations or Family would be better.

Both have sets of threads specifically for money saving ideas on various birthdays.

So please pick one and I'll move your thread across

I think old style is a great place for it, imho!! i had you all in mind as i planned ours (it gave me the 'strength' to do homemade bags and not fill them with plastic junk!)

x