Birthday Party Ideas for 14yo?

[spruce]

Hi, all,

My Dd is turning 14 and we're having a big (for us) party for her Friday night.

Difficulties: We live in Alaska, where it's currently sopping wet, and getting colder.

We will have both boys and girls at the party, but the non-sleepover kids (all boys and some girls) will be driven home at 10pm.

The original plan was for a huge "Twister" "Twist-Off," where all the kids bring a Twister game if they have one, and we battle Twister-style.

That may still happen, just in more confined space (i.e., indoors).

Other than that, I'm at a loss. Most of these kids are black belts in our martial arts academy, they're very well-behaved and very silly people. I want to put on a kick-butt party for her, but I have literally NO ideas.

The kids are fun enough that silly games and goofy stuff is fine, so anything in that order would be a good choice. I don't want a "Let's watch a movie," type party, yk?

Last year for this particular Dd's bday we had a day out at the lakes, with a cookout, and then the sleepover kids came over and we painted her dresser. Yeah, exciting. (It *was* pretty fun).

So? Food ideas, etc?

FWIW, 1/2 of these kids are homeschooled. We're secular, for what it's worth, but it does mean they don't watch TV and have no idea what the "latest" is as far as shows, fashions, etc.

Thanks for any ideas, I'm almost frantic with worry that it will be a big flop.



love, penelope

[skreader]

Here are some ideas...

1) Sock-hop dance party?
- Since you mentioned that many of the kids are martial artists, they may be physically gifted. Maybe you could have a "sock-hop" type party (or part of the party) where the kids can learn how to do the twist, the mashed potato, etc.

http://www.sixtiescity.com/Culture/dance.shtm

Maybe even how to Charleston?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLVyv-8Np8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfv-kVhUL70&NR=1

These are all dances that are not "couple" dances, so kids might feel comfortable trying them.

Limbo might also be fun

Ask the kids to wear something relatively nice - make it a bit special? But if they are real "dress down" types, never mind. As the words to "Dancing in the Streets" say:
"It doesn't matter what you wear, just as long as you are there".

Food...
Hard to go wrong w/ pizza & some finger foods


Drink - If you don't do commercial soda, a nice drink to make is to get orange juice & dilute 50-50 w/ plain soda water (seltzer). I helped my mom give a party the spring where that was the main drink & instead of ice-cubes, I sliced up some oranges the night before and froze them & put them in the "punch bowl" to keep it cold.

Other ideas for activities:

Charades
Here are the basic rules:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~nau/misc/charades.html

Here's a list of party games for teenagers - maybe it might inspire you?
http://parentingteens.about.com/od/b...thdayparty.htm

Good luck!

[BedHead]

Ooo, fun!

They'd probably get a kick out of musical chairs. Do you have any kind of theme? Would the guys be into letting the girls do makeovers on them or something really silly like that? What about a pinata? Do you have lots of board games? Decks of cards? I found that as my kids got older, the less I planned the better things went. I would make sure I had lots of ideas and suggestions, but let them pick what they wanted to do. Often the things I was sure they'd love they didn't want to do at all.

As for food, my kids always LOVED doing make your own pizzas, but with a lot of kids that becomes rather time consuming. If you're into it and have the time, you can find all kinds of goofy types of party food ideas on line (cat litter cake anyone?) I would offer water and lemonade and maybe tea to drink.

[spruce]

Thanks for all the ideas! We have tons of board games, but with 10 teenagers, it would be hard to find a game that everyone could play together.

The sock hop idea is BRILLIANT! I can so see these kids doing the Charleston!

And Limbo...how did I forget that??? We must limbo. I think only one of the invitees is NOT a martial artist, (and she's a swimmer), so being limber is pretty important to them. That's such an awesome idea!

I think we've settled on "make your own pizzas" with me making the dough and putting out the ingredients. My 14 yo might change her mind and want me to just make a few differently-laden pizzas so they can eat and then play...we'll see.

Thanks again! This is the first year we've excluded boys from the sleepover, and that's changed quite a lot of how we work our birthdays. It's become more important to make the 4 hours of the "party" count instead of letting them do whatever until they drop.

(One year they stayed up and needle felted while watching "Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail." You never know what will take their fancy).

Thanks again!

love, penelope

[spruce]

Whew, the party is over! I think we had about fifty teens here (not really, only 9 or so) and 5 littler ones.

I didn't need to worry.

They twistered, they discoed (B set up a blue light -like an emergency vehicle light-to strobe around, and we had a bunch of colored lights, as well). They danced, they even chicken danced and ballroom danced. They ran around our (large) block several times. They played frisbee, had a Pogo-stick contest. They did do the limbo, but to techno music.

When they were worn out, they played Apples to Apples, and then got interested in the little kids' movie (Mary Poppins), so I had a bunch of kids in my bedroom watching MP.


And I made posters of dozens of pictures of A throughout her life, and got out her baby book and opened it to a particularly fun page.

Oh, man.

We even had 1/2 a cake go flying (on accident) across the room. I have to get my photobucket back up just for that picture!

So now I have two sleepover teens, my own kids, and a lot of dishes.

*whew*

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions!

love, penelope

[skreader]

Sounds like a fantastic and memorable party.

Congratulations and have a good rest.

[journeymom]

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