Movie Night Birthday Party

A movie night birthday party is really quite simple to do, and it is something kids get really excited about. At young ages, they don't often get to stay up "late" with friends watching a movie. Both Brayden (turning 12) and Kaitlyn (turning 10) chose to do a movie night birthday party this year. Here is how to throw your own movie night party. This post contains affiliate links.

Invitations

One of the first things to do is to make the guest list and create invitations. Give your child the limit on number of friends he can invite. Make sure you have enough seating for your movie with your guests. Kids don't mind squishing and don't seem to need to be super comfortable, but they still need space. One note, over the years, I have found kids love parties. They rarely, rarely miss a party. One of my friends once doubled the number of children she hoped to end up with, which is perfectly wise because that is what you do for baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, etc. You are told to invite twice as many as you want. Not so with birthday parties. Children will come.

I have been loving using Canva.com for invitations. You can find invitations for free. Some cost a little money. Kaitlyn's cost me $1 and Brayden's was free. They have several movie layouts, so definitely check them out!

Movie

You will also want to choose what movie you will be watching early on. Most parents of elementary students are careful about what their children watch, and they will want to know what you are watching. You might even include it on the invitation. You will also want time to get the movie if you will be watching one you don't own.

Another reason to decide early on is so you can know the run-time of your movie. Movies can vary greatly in length. If you are watching a 2 hour long movie, you might start your party earlier than you would for a 1.5 hour long movie. 

Food

If you are having a party with boys, the food will be one of the most important elements of the party. Boys care more about this than anything. We always have endless supply of popcorn for our movie nights, birthday party or not. We pop it with an air-popper usually, though for Brayden's we did have a giant bag of pre-popped popcorn. That was much easier for a birthday party. It was hard to keep up with the popcorn wants for Kaitlyn's party. For the parties this year, we got these fun popcorn boxes for the popcorn and the kids thought that was fun. 

It is also fun to have something sweet. You can buy the movie theater boxes of candy from WalMart for around $1 each. You can order packs of them from Amazon often that are cheaper than buying them individually. We have baked cookies and we have also done chocolates in a chocolate mold.

With a birthday party, we do cake and ice cream, so we usually only do the popcorn and don't worry about the sweet. We eat the cake and ice cream just before the movie starts. I figure that is enough sugar!

You will also want some sort of drink. We are all basically water drinkers at our house, so that is usually what we do. An easy thing to do is to have a jug of water and cups with their names on them so they keep them straight. 

Games

For the party, you don't want to start right out with the movie. No matter if we are having a birthday party or just a late-night with a movie, we start the party 1-1.5 hours before we need to start the movie. This gives the kids time to interact and get the wiggle out before the movie starts. We let this be pretty flexible. We have party board games ready to go if needed. We have the backyard to play in. We let the kids drive the activity, and I consistently find they want time to run around the yard and be crazy before settling in for a movie. The older they are, the less structure they want at this point and the more they want opportunity to talk (even boys. Weird).

One note, we count back from the end of the party to figure out how long we have for games. I like to end at 10. We then move back how long we need to for the movie they will be watching (Brayden's was 2 hour and 5 minutes, so we planned to start the movie at 7:50). Then we add 30 minutes total for cake and ice cream and presents. So then we know how long we have available for games.

Thank You
I like to give a "thank-you" at the end of the party. This has traditionally been a "party favor," but instead of calling it that, I am now calling it a "thank you." I like that it puts my kids in the frame of mind to be thankful their friends came. For the movie night, I got more of the popcorn boxes and a case of Sour Patch Kids from Amazon (you could, again, go to Walmart for movie theater size candy boxes instead. I like to shop on Amazon for convenience. Also, the popcorn boxes are an "add-on" item, so you have to spend so much to get the add on item. It was just easier to do everything in one transaction on Amazon). We shredded some yellow paper to go in the bottom of the box and made some "thank-you" cards. Kaitlyn handed these to her friends as they left her party.

For Brayden's party, I actually didn't even go this far. I had all the stuff for it, but May is the craziest month of the year around here, and his birthday party was in the hands-down busiest week of the year for us. The day of the party, I realized boys don't care about cute. The girls notice it and appreciate it. 99% of boys take no notice. At all. Brayden handed out the boxes to his friends right at the beginning of the movie and said "Thanks for coming to my party." It worked out very well.

Related Posts:

• Birthday Friend Party Tips
• Birthday Party Planner {Free Printable}
• LEGO Birthday Party
• Little Artist Party
• Princess Birthday Party
• Safari Birthday Party
• The Easiest {and Best} Kid Party Ever

• How to Host a Successful Swimming Party

How to Host a Successful Swimming Party

I love an easy party. Last year, McKenna did a party at a gymnastics gym and it was fantastic! This year, she wanted to do a swimming party and I was all over that. 

Here are my tips on doing your own pool party. It was an easy party to do--I love going places for the party. It is easier pre-prep and easier clean up by far. 

Pre-Party:

1. Call the pool you want to have the party at with a lot of advance notice. I had planned to go to the party just during open swim hours, but when I called, I found out I could rent the pool. They only rent out the pool at certain times, so days are limited. That is why you want to call ahead of time.
   
   I highly recommend renting out a pool and not doing a party during public pool time. The reason for this is that you can't easily keep an eye on all of those kids if you are at the public pool. Yes, pools have life guards, but if you don't like taking your own children to the pool alone  because you worry about what might happen, then you certainly don't want to take 10-20 or more kids to the pool by yourself or with one other adult!
   
   If you can't rent anywhere, then enlist enough adults to be there to help it be a safe activity.
2. Create and deliver invites. Get invites out 1-2 weeks in advance. See the one we did below. I made it in Canva, which is a free program that is very easy to use! Just go to canva.com.
3. Prep your thank you gift (party favor).
4. Talk to the parents before you go. Know their comfort level in the pool. Make sure they bring flotation devices if needed. Make sure you know what the moms want with their child. For example, one mom told me her daughter had never had swimming lessons and she was worried about the party. She sent her in a life vest. Halfway through, the girl decided she felt comfortable and didn't need her life vest. I stopped her and told her that her mom wanted the vest on the whole time, so she turned around and put it back on. 
5. Make sure you have a life guard. If you are at a private pool, you need someone there dedicated to watching kids and keeping them safe who knows how to do so. 
6. Buy any toys and prep any activities you might want to do at the party.
7. Get cake and ice cream ready. 

Pictured below, you can see the toys I bought for the party and also the party favor we did. 

• SwimWays Toypedo Bandits: This was by far the most popular of all the toys we bought. Apparently you throw them in the water and they shoot off like a torpedo. Very popular.
• Waboba: This is a ball that had my kids literally jumping up and down in joy that I bought it. This ball bounces on water and is a fun ball to play with in water. 
• Splash Bombs: More water balls. I got this four pack just to add to the number of balls. The Waboba was by far more popular, but these are a lot less expensive.
• Intex Underwater Toys: I also got this Intex pack. The diving sticks were the most popular of the three types of toys that came in this bundle.  
• Pool Noodles: The pool we went to has tons of pool noodles, and every single kid played with them. These are a huge hit with kids. 
• Swedish Fish: I bought this pack of Swedish Fish. Then I put a note on it that read, "Splish, splash, thanks for coming to my birthday bash."

At Party:

1. Decide on your party flow. We did swimming, presents, and cake and ice cream. It would make sense to do all of that before swimming so everyone isn't wet and cold when you do cake and ice cream and presents. Remember that eating before swimming isn't a good idea. Your biggest concern with this age really is them puking the food up in the pool. So you might do presents before, but you should leave cake and ice cream to the end.
   
   One hard thing with starting with presents is that you often don't get everyone there right at start time. So if you start with presents, you might be waiting around for 15 minutes before everyone gets there. 
2. You might plan some water games, but realize that a lot of times, many kids are not great swimmers. The pool manager told me that they have a pool party with fifth graders every year and every single year, they have to save a couple of kids from drowning. The children you invite will have various swimming skills, so be ready to change or scratch games if needed. We had a lot of games planned and in the end, just let the kids play with the toys and with each other the whole time they were swimming. We didn't do any games. So be ready to be flexible. Have ideas for in water games, out of water games, and be willing to just let them play in the water if they are loving that. 

That is it! It was super simple and a lot of fun. Of course in my planning, I found several fun ideas on Pinterest. Be sure to check out my Birthdays and Parties board for more pool party ideas! Just remember, children do not have as grand of expectations as you might see on Pinterest. They are very content with simple, so don't kill yourself over a 2 hour party. 

The Easiest {and Best} Kid Party Ever

"This is the best birthday party I have ever been to!" This sentiment was heard several times from the children at McKenna's birthday party earlier this month. That is always a feeling you are going for when you have a birthday party for your child. You want the children to all have fun. But that isn't all you want. You also want to end the day with your sanity in tact.

That was just what I was aiming for and it is just what I got.

It was a year for McKenna to have a friend birthday party (we don't do friend parties every year). This year, her birthday fell during spring break. A party over spring break is always risky business because a lot of people go out of town for spring break. Just before her birthday, however, was the weekend of our big musical production--the one three of my children were in and I was directing. That meant her birthday party needed to be pretty early.

That also meant that her birthday party needed to be during a very crazy time--the last couple of weeks before opening night of the show. I knew my time and sanity would be stretched thin. In a world of Pinterest parties, it seems like a lame way to go. Sanity, however, is worth "lame," so I looked to other options.

There are many places out there that provide birthday parties for children. They provide the location and entertainment. Some even provide more than that like cake and ice cream. Bowling, swimming, jump parks, gyms, roller skating...most places that have indoor entertainment do birthday parties. 

In the end, I checked with the gym where McKenna takes gymnastics. They didn't advertise birthday party options, but I though I would ask. They do parties! We were able to rent out the entire gym for two hours with two coaches to run the party for not much more than I normally spend on a party once you add up things to do activities, decorations, and party favors. 

And the kids LOVED the party. They said it was the best party they had ever been to. They were also all thoroughly exhausted by the end, which is fantastic on what ended up being a cold, rainy day. 

I also loved the party. I didn't have to clean my house before. Do you know what my husband and I did in the hours before the party? We trimmed our fruit trees! No party prep. Just tree trimming. I didn't have to clean my house afterward, either. 

I also didn't have to make party games. I didn't have to entertain for two hours. I just got to sit back and take pictures of the fun. Here are a couple of tips:

• Start planning a couple of months before the party date you hope to have. I started looking up things and making phone calls mid-January. Places often have limited times when parties can be done, so you don't want to make inquiries too late and have places all full. One place I tried to get information from was painfully slow in returning my calls. It would take days in between me leaving a message and them getting back to me (I ended up NOT doing the party there). You just want plenty of time so it isn't super stressful. 
• Think of things your child love to do and look at places that have those for options. McKenna loves gymnastics and loves swimming, so those were my top two options. Most children her age are not super swimmers, however,  and the options for indoor pools in our area are ALL workout pools--meaning no slides, no playgrounds, and nothing that you wade into. They are also pretty cold. Nate and I decided we didn't want to have to worry about a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds in a pool. 
• Every place I looked into charged a set amount for a certain number of children and then charged a certain amount more for each extra child. Be sure to ask about that.
• Ask about decorations, food, and paperware. You want to know what you can bring in and what they will provide. 
• You will want space to do cake/ice cream and presents. When you are a at a fun place like this, most kids don't want to spend much time eating. We usually plan for 30 minutes for those two activities and we are usually rushing to fit it in to 30 minutes. At this party, however, the kids were long ready by 20 minutes to get back to the fun.
• When sending out invitations, ask for an RSVP by date. I always ask for an RSVP, and I usually get about half respond. For this, however, people responded and responded promptly. I asked for an RSVP a week before the party. I sent invitation out two weeks before the party. I typically do one week before, but I did two weeks with this party.

Nate and I loved this party and commented that we have found our new favorite way to do a birthday party. I would highly recommend looking into what is available around you when you have your next birthday party! 

LEGO Birthday Party

For Brayden's 10th birthday this year, he wanted a LEGO theme party. We played some games, age some food, and watched the LEGO Movie. I decided for his party to really focus mostly on food. Boys love food, especially boys the age of Brayden (and old...probably for the rest of life). They appreciate food so much more than decorations. This post contains affiliate links. 

Here is the invitation. You can get the LEGO font for free here. 

I purchased these Lego Molds from Amazon. The first thing I did was make a bunch of ice cubes. After a couple of rounds, I got the idea to add some food coloring to the ice cubes. The boys liked the ice cubes waaaaaay more than I thought they would. They were so excited about them and though they were so cool. They also loved the color aspect--as they added them to their drink, they would make new colors. One note, their fingers got messy touching food coloring ice. It wasn't a problem with these older kids, but if you are having younger kids at a party, you might want to go for clear.

As the ice was done, I put it into a bowl to keep in the freezer. I just made it all the day before the party.

Once the ice was done, I moved on to chocolates. All I did to make these was melt chocolate chips then pour the melted chocolate into the molds and then put them in the fridge to cool. One bag of chocolate chips filled up all 3 molds. It only took a few hours for the chocolates to harden in the fridge and be ready for removal. 

The boys also looooved these chocolates. They ate them during the movie.Big hit. And you could make all sorts of things in the molds, like these gummy candies.  

I also purchased these Candy Blox Blocks on Amazon. I bought the 2 pound bag, which was more than enough. I used these as small prizes for winning rounds in games played. I also gave each boy a baggie of them to eat during the movie. The boys love this candy. 

Then we of course did the LEGO cake. This is just a cake cooked in a 9x11ish size pan. Then you cut it into pieces (we did 3). Frost it. Then frost the Oreo (you can use marshmallows cut, which I had done before, but this is easier). Put the frosted Oreo on and touch up as needed. We had this with ice cream.

We also had popcorn with the movie. 

That covers the food.

As the boys arrived, I had them guess how many LeGOs were in the mason jar. They filled out their guesses and put them on a slip of paper. They put the slip of paper into the Yellow Cup LEGO face (made with a simple Sharpie). Later in the party, I went through the guesses and gave a prize to the person who guessed the closest. I waited until after the car racing competition, described below, was over so the same child wouldn't win both games. It wasn't an issue in the end, but I wanted to be sure. For the prize, I did a LEGO Creator set. I had thought about doing the mason jar of LEGOs, but buying a set of LEGOs I could put in the jar would have cost more than the creator set. 

I also had this set out for the boys to look at. It is the original patent for the LEGO. The boys were very interested in this. Again, I think it was of great interest because they are older. For younger children, this would likely just be a nice decoration. I just put it in a frame I already own and used it for the night. 

Once all of the boys were there, we played our first game. It was like "pictionary" but building LEGOs. Lego actually makes a game called LEGO Creationary Game, which is currently outrageously priced on Amazon (perhaps it is no longer made?). We own it, so we used the cards from the game, but Brayden wanted to just us a big pile of his LEGOs instead of the ones from the game so there could be more variety. We just went around the circle. The boy picked one picture from the card I gave him. The first person to guess what it was got a couple of the Candy Blox candy pieces. If you want cards for the game, Amazon has a booster pack (Lego Creationary Game Booster Pack) you could get. Or you could make your own cards for basically free. The boys were totally into this. Brayden actually didn't even know I took pictures while they were playing (he has been looking over my shoulder as I write this). 

One of Brayden's favorite things he did at LEGOLAND when we went this year was build his own minifigure. I found a kit on Amazon that is a Bag O' Bricks (Lego Minifigure Grab Bag). It has pieces to make several minifigures. It says 10, but I read reviews and one said it is 8, so plan on that. I separated the pieces out as shown above. I then wrote the numbers 1-6 on slips of paper. We went in rounds. For round one, they each chose as number and then chose a head in order number. So number one went first and so on. Then the slips went back and they all drew numbers again and chose a body in number order. This way it was all random but the order was different every time. It worked well. The boys took this minifigure home with them. 

Our final game was car racing. The boys first designed and built a car. Brayden has enough pieces that we didn't have to buy anything (we had gotten him this LEGO Education Wheels Set for last Christmas. That worked out!). For the ramp, we used a Lifetime table we own with a piece of cardboard taped to the bottom. Fancy huh? Boys don't care. They don't even notice.

As they built, we had the ramp up so they could test it out. My husband is a mechanical engineer and worked as a mechanic through college, so he gave them pointers on how to make a good car. Some listened and some still did their own thing. 

We put names on slips of paper and drew them out for the brackets. They raced each other and did the best two out of three. Single elimination. We wrote it out on the chalkboard you can see on the right side of the picture above. The winner of it all won a LEGO Creator Blue Racer Set. 

We then did presents and cake and ice cream.

That all took us about 2.5 hours. I had more planned (better to have too many ideas than not enough). 

We then watched The Lego Movie. The party started at 7 PM so we could do activities and go into a "late night" of watching The Lego Movie. I set out the Lifetime table with the food and drinks. The boys ate their treats while watching the show. 

The party was a huge hit. It was really simple to prepare for. It was inexpensive. The boys had a great time. 

One thing to note, the Yellow Cup is not that easy to find. We luckily had a few. We bought red cups since red is a LEGO color. We used those for drinks and for the boys to put their popcorn in. We used our few yellow for the paper slips, forks, etc. If you really want a yellow one for each boy, start looking early enough to try a few stores or just order online. 

For a whole lot of ideas, including all places where I got my inspiration, see my Birthdays and Parties Pinterest board. There are a lot of good ideas there. 

Little Artist Party

Kaitlyn turned 8 this year, and 8 is an age our children have a friend birthday party (for ideas on how frequently to have birthday parties at your house, see this post: Birthday Friend Party Tips). Kaitlyn wanted an "artist" party. Here is the invitation:

This post contains affiliate links.  I just used a clipart template I found online and put it into Photoshop Elements and filled in the rest. 

We had 14 8 year old girls (and one 6 year old McKenna and one 2 year old Brinley. Brayden played photographer for the party) and the party was two hours. We could have been longer--we didn't have time for most of the things I had planned.

As the girls arrived, they played in our backyard. I really think we could have had a party where they just played in the backyard! They were loving it and had a lot of fun just playing with each other.

You can see here some of how we decorated. I bought a bunch of those $1 table clothes at Walmart. We wrapped the poles of our deck with them and also lined the underside of the deck so it was colorful (the wind blew really hard and pulled some of the corners loose before the party started). I also had a bunting banner (the pattern is on the opposite side of what you can see) I got at Walmart for $1. I didn't realize how short it was. I don't think a child cared.

Our first activity was painting. I bought some canvas panels off of Amazon. I also got acrylic paints from Amazon--these were fabulous but for the number of girls I had, I would have done better with two sets of these paints. We put the paint into Paint Tray Palettes and spread them out for the girls to share. I had purchased a paint brush set that came in various sizes, but most girls wanted smaller brushes, so I also ended up using these paint brushes that I already had. We also gave each girl a cup of water and a paper towel. We had paint shirts or they could just use these Artists Aprons I got from Amazon and sent home with each girl (they are okay--they would be better for 4-5 year olds size wise, but they worked).

These girls painted for an hour. An HOUR! I think painting on a canvas just made it so they loved it. I have no doubt if I had done paper it would have been a much faster activity. Some girls were faster than that. If they finished early, they just played while the other girls finished up.

Our next activity was to quickly eat some dinner of pizza, oranges, and carrots. We hadn't originally planned on a meal, but Kaitlyn' soccer game got moved two days before the party to the exact time of her party, so we had to move it back, which put it over dinner time. 

After dinner, we did a cupcake decorating activity. They really loved this. I gave each girl a cupcake and had an assortment of sprinkles, sparkles, flowers, beads, etc. for them to use to decorate. I let them apply their own frosting, as well, which they totally loved and it of course saved me some serious prep time! This took a long time, and the girls really got into making their cupcakes fancy.

I was so glad the weather was nice so we could have this party outside. The paint and the cupcake thing were both very messy and could have been a sad thing in the house.

As girls finished up, they rushed out to play while the others finished eating.

After cupcakes were consumed, we opened presents. And that was it! Time was up and parents came. I will share my other ideas, though.

We had prepped things to play Pin the Petal on the Flower. It is an idea I came up with to have a cooperative pin game since the party was about art and creating things. We played it as a family the next day at Kaitlyn's family party.

I also had planned to play color tag. To play color tag, one person is it. Everyone else lines up on one side of the room or yard. The "It" person calls out a color. Everyone wearing that color runs to the other side of the room or yard and tries to not be touched. Anyone tagged joins the "It" person in tagging people. You continue on until no one is left. The last person tagged gets to be "It" next. 

I also had things prepped to play pictionary. We played this at Kaitlyn's party last year and the girls loved it. For the words to draw, I had just chosen art words and words that are related to things Kaitlyn loves.

Finally, I had planned to play sculpturades. This is where you have play dough and sculpt the word instead of drawing it. I bought some new dough so it would be fresh and easy to use. 

The girls went home with their canvas painting and the aprons. 

You can find some of these ideas and more art party ideas on my Birthdays and Parties Pinterest board.

Birthday Party Planner {Free Printable}

Every time I plan a birthday party, I make notes in my notebook and grid things out in a certain way. The other day I decided to make a cute version to print out--for nor reason other than it is fun. So I made one and here it is for any of you who want it. I always list out:

• Activity ideas
• To Do list
• Party favor ideas
• Guest list
• Food ideas
• Invitation ideas

Click here to access the document on my Google Drive. You can download it and save it there. 

For more ideas on planning parties, see this post: Birthday Friend Party Tips

Planning a Successful Class Party

The class party time is upon us! Class parties can be a lot of fun, but they can also be a lot of work. I have been involved in class parties since Brayden (now in fourth grade) was in Kindergarten. Here are some tips to help you have a successful class party. You might want to mix up the order of steps, but consider each step in your planning process.

1-Remember Kids Have Low Expectations

While you have known about the game of tic-tac-toe for about the last 30 years, these children are just discovering it. We often make things bigger and grander than they need to be for children. Children are okay with simple. They enjoy simple. 

I look at this as a "good, better, best" situation. Is it best to make your first graders class party have an appearance worthy of Pinterest, or are there other things you can be doing with that time that are actually "best"? Children are thrilled with the simple, so don't make it harder than it has to be (and this really applies to pretty much anything you plan for kids, from family vacations to birthday parties to daily summer activities). 

2-Divide the Time

The first thing to find out is how much time does the teacher want you to take for the party. Most teachers at our school like us to take one hour (one I have had goes longer). With one hour, I plan for 3-4 activities (usually 3). We divide the class into 3 groups and have each group be about 20 minutes long. How many groups you can do will depend on how much help you have. You will want an adult running each station, so if you have 4 helpers, you can have 4 stations. 3 means 3 stations. 

Once you know the time and how long each station will be, you know how long each activity needs to take. This will help guide you in choosing activities. 

3-Gather Help

The next thing you will want to find out is how much help you will have. Ask the teacher if she would like to be over a center or if she would like to roam the room. I have had teachers go both ways, though I would say even the teacher willing to do a center loves to be able to go all around the room and observe the party as a whole. Consider how much time you have, how many students you have, and how many centers you want to have. I like to have 3-4 groups, so that means there needs to be 3-4 moms there helping.

I find as a general rule, parents are more eager and willing to help in younger grades than in older grades. In a child's Kindergarten class, there will easily be 6 moms there to help. In the third grade class, it can be work to scrape together 3 moms. And some of my kids classes just have more people willing to help than others. For example, last year, Kaitlyn's first grade class had a lot of moms who wanted to help, while another first grade class at the same school literally had one mom doing every party. 

4-Gather Ideas

Now that you know how much time you have and how much help you will have, you can gather ideas. Sometimes I gather ideas before getting help. For example, this year I knew that in McKenna's Kindergarten class, I would have no trouble getting help for the party. I gathered my ideas and chose the activities before asking for help. That way, when I asked someone to help, I could say, "Would you be willing to run the painting pumpkins station?" Some people are happy to help but intimidated by planning the activity.

There is no better resource than Pinterest for finding fun ideas. Trust me, I have done these parties before and after Pinterest and Pinterest makes it a ton easier. Search "Halloween games" or "Christmas craft" or "Thanksgiving treat" and you will find a lot of ideas. There are also blogs dedicated to class party plans. Room Mom 101 is a great resource. You can find ideas I have pinned on these boards:

• Learning Ideas: Holidays
• Learning Ideas: Seasonal
• Halloween
• Christmas

5-Choose Activities

I like to break the activities up into categories. I go for a craft activity, a game, and a treat the children can assemble. You can also do another game or craft and just have a treat for them to eat at the end. 

There are some things you want to keep in mind when choosing activities. One is paint. Paint takes time to dry. If you are doing the party at the end of the day, you might want to have all of the children do the painting portion at the same time at the beginning and then break up into stations so the paint can dry while before it is time to go home. Another option is to talk to the teacher ahead of time and plan to let the project stay over night and the children bring it home the next day. Glue is similar--it takes time to dry. 

Just be sure the activity you plan can be accomplished in the time you have. 

You also want to be sure the activity is in general age-appropriate for the class. I have at times prepared an activity before hand and taken it to the teacher to see if she thought it would work for the class. I mostly have had this uncertainty with Brayden since he is my oldest and I am not as familiar with what children of that age in general are capable of.

5-Prepare Activities

Once you have activities chosen, make sure you give yourself enough time to prep the activity. Have everything for the activity read to go. If you need copies, most teachers are willing to do the copies for you or will allow you to go to the workroom to make them yourself. 

Bring everything you need to set up the activity, do the activity, and clean up after the activity. Will you need napkins, wet wipes, soap, etc?

Another thing to plan for is a way for kids to get these things from the party home if needed. Not all will eat the treat. Some will want to take it home. Baggies can be good for that. Grocery sacks can be good for taking home painted or glued project without getting it all over the inside of the backpack.

6-Bring Books

Sometimes the activity you plan will go faster than you think it will. I always bring about 3 books per station so I can read a book to them if there is extra time. I bring books that go with the theme of the party, so Halloween books for Halloween party.

7-Go a Bit Early

You know the party is from 2-3. Find out what time to go to set up. You don't want to show up at 2. You want to be ready to party at 2.

8-Be a Sport

Get involved and have fun with the party. This is a party! I always dress up for Halloween parties. I try to be festive and have fun with the kids. 

Do you have any questions, comments, or ideas for class parties?

Princess Birthday Party

While there are a lot of photo ideas out there for a princess birthday party, there are very few posts full of all the info from a party from start to finish. Since I just did one for McKenna, I thought it might be helpful to some to get some full ideas.

Let's start with the invitation. There are tons of ideas out there, so you can easily "google" or search on Pinterest for "princess party invitation" and find a lot of good ideas. Here is the I did for McKenna's party. I googled for ideas and came up with this.

Like I said in my recent post on birthday parties, I have found a scavenger hunt type of party works really well for keeping a large group of children interested and engaged in what is going on. I searched for princess party games and made a list of all of the ones I thought looked fun. Then I made a list of all of the princesses. I chose a game for each princess. Then I wrote up poems to clue us in for which princess we would go to each time.

As soon as the children were all there, we started our scavenger hunt. Our point was to help Cinderella find her lost glass slipper. I did that because Cinderella is McKenna's favorite princess. Just make sure you hide it somewhere the kids can't easily see it. I had mine hidden on a chair right under that kitchen table, and they found it as soon as I read the introduction! Here is intro. 

Now that the suspense was built, I read the first clue. I put a picture on each clue so I could show the kids which princess it was after they guess (and so I could remember!). So I read the clue, then had the kids guess which princess it was, and then showed them the picture.

We then went and played "poison apple," which is like "hot potato." I used an apple from our toy kitchen stuff. I downloaded some of our favorite Disney songs, put them on my iPod, and played the songs while they passed it around. Before the game started, we explained the rules and that if you had the apple when the music stopped, you fell "asleep" and were out of the game. I was sure to ask, "Is it a big deal if you get out? No. It is just part of the game." We didn't have any sore losers.

Poison Apple

Next clue:

We then played "Magic Carpets," which is like musical chairs. I used pieces of fabric I cut into little rectangles. You could use rugs or doormats or those carpet sample mats. Fabric can be cheap if you don't have anything that will work and are buying it. Again, I used the same playlist of princess songs (as a side note, I hid in the closet while running music so I wouldn't favor anything toward McKenna winning).

Musical carpets. The adult in the picture is my friend Cassie--she is McKenna's primary teacher
and McKenna loves her so much that she invited her to the party :)

Next Clue:

Oohhh the most anticipated princess! We then did freeze dance. This is done by playing a song and then pausing it. When the music pauses, you freeze and hold that position. Then you continue the music and then pause, etc. We of course did this to a song from Frozen and the kids all sang along. This one has no winner--just lots of fun.

Freeze Dance

Next Clue:

We then did "Under the Sea Limbo." This was a huge hit. We used a dowel and hung blue streamers from it. I played the song "Under the Sea" as they did this. As the bar got lower, the kids started to crawl under it. We didn't make a big deal about it. We didn't have anyone sit out nor did we have a winner. They all had fun just going under the bar over and over. 

Under the Sea Limbo

By the end, they got a little sneaky

Next Clue:

We then played "Pin the Kiss on the Frog." I bought a poster board and my husband drew a frog on it. He is a good artist. Then I cut out a kiss for each kid plus some extras (you never know what will happen). 

Pin the Kiss on the Frog

Next Clue:

We then put together puzzles. We have a bunch of princess puzzles, so we did those. You can find puzzles at the dollar store. We had the kids pair off and work together. I hadn't looked closely at the puzzles and some were 100 piece and some were 25 piece. Oops. It didn't end up being a big deal. When a pair got their 25 piecer done, we just said, "good job!" and ended the puzzle activity. The grown-ups there helped the kids with the 100 piece puzzles, but they still didn't get done.

Puzzle Time

Next Clue:

The idea here was to then color a picture, but we were running short on time, so we sent each child home with the picture I printed. I googled "Frozen coloring page" and printed off a page with each Frozen character in it. I thought about varying the pictures, but then I decided that would lead to some hurt feelings, so each child got the same picture. 

Next Clue:

We then read a story. And that story was of course Frozen. 

Final Clue:

Of course they already knew where it was so it was not difficult :). 

We then opened presents. We followed that up with cake and ice cream. I do cupcakes for kid parties. 

Around here, it is customary to send each child home with a small gift. We did a little favor bag you can buy at Walmart (I got ones that are pink with crowns on them). Inside we put a wand for girls, a glow-in-the-dark sword for boys, and bubbles for all. 

There you have it! If you want a copy of the clues, follow this link. We did 1.5 hours and it could have been 2 hours with the number of children we had and number of activities we had. You can cut games shorter if needed, but sending home the coloring page worked great, too. 

Here are some other ideas I considered:

• Princess Bingo
• Freeze Tag (instead of Freeze Dance)
• Decorate Crowns (considered this for Aurora)
• Read on a Magic Carpet (instead of playing the Magic Carpet musical chairs game)
• Ballpit to search for stickers on balls (for Ariel instead of the limbo)