Cheap, "crunchy" pinata ideas? - Page 2

[gmvh]

These ideas are great! My children have asked to do one for their birthday so I'm on the hunt. We'll have lots of children here so I'm thinking:

shredded paper/confetti (outdoor party)
loose Lego
strings of beads
bouncy or pink balls
silly bandz
temporary tatoos
stickers
wedding favor sized bubbles
rainbow crayons (we have such a huge bucket of broken bits!)
sidewalk chalk bundles
maybe a mixed bag of candy from Costco

A colleague, who shares a birthday with my children, was trying to convince me to make it with a 96" balloon. Can you imagine! She has no children...

[*jeanine*]

We went to a party where the hosts put mandarin oranges in the pinata. Most of them remained edible.

[ikesmom]

I saw a post on here one time about someone who filled the whole pinata with bouncy balls. They strung it over their drive way so when the balls hit the floor ..it was bouncy mania.

Honestly I love love love the pinata thing. We make one for each kid every birthday. They enjoy taking part in it and mixing and decorating the cake. For us it is such a simple pleasure.

I saw some tissue paper flowers on this blog http://www.ikatbag.com/2009/10/how-t...r-flowers.html
I think that you could put a lollypop in the middle of the flower.. and the stick is the stem. Pompom bugs and pipe cleaner butterflys could work well too. This could be an alternative to a pinata ..stick them in a flower pot or make a flower picking garden.

We recently went to an event where they had minute to win it games and it was a blast. The parents got involved too and it kept everyone entertained for almost an hour.

[carfreemama]

ikesmom, thanks for the link to the crafts!

We're another pinata family and we make ours every year. It IS expensive, no matter what you fill it with. I LOVE the lego idea, especially since we do co-ed parties.

Just a note, my 6 year ol dd didn't like the idea of treat bags in the pinata. Part of the fun was having individual items fall all over the place.

I do think minimizing the grab-for-all is good, at least in our crowd and especially with the younger children. We made sure to have everyone get roughly equal amounts of treats. That said, we were impressed by the trading that went on and the attempts made by the kids to ensure fairness themselves.

For future years, my key tip is to start early! We know we'll be doing a pinata and now it's literally in my consciousness all year. Dd's b-day is at the end of February and we're well on our way to having the filling collected. Clearance means much cheaper and the costs are spread out over a year. Also fun is the fact that we get better at actually making the pinatas with practice over the years. I may be ready to attempt an actual design this year.

Have fun, sweet mama!

[MisaGoat]

We just had a pinata at my son's birthday party. It was his only request for the party. He went to a party in July and it was the first time he saw a pinata and thought it was great. However we still have candy from that pinata. I let him have one piece a day if he asks, I think we still have Halloween candy too because it is just too much candy!

I stuffed the pinata with fruit strips, gummi snacks, snack sized bags of cookies/animal crackers, pencils, mini slinkys (which were a huge hit), small containers of playdoh, little kaleidoscopes, some candy (lollipops and m&ms). I tried to make it stuff that would still be a treat since I don't normally buy fruit strips/gummi snacks/cookies but that wasn't ALL candy. I also had some silly straws that didn't make it in, my husband filled it and missed some of the stuff I had for it.

We didn't have any trouble breaking the store bought pinata. It was my son's 4th birthday and his 5 year old cousin broke it open with a whiffle ball bat.

If you are concerned about everyone grabbing and it not being distributed evenly, you can hold some extra fillings aside and help fill out the treats to those who weren't as quick. Especially if there will be an age range.

[pianojazzgirl]

My dd's sixth birthday party was yesterday, and I made my own pinata, so I thought I'd share what I filled it with (all from the $ store except for the candy and glitter pens).

- Crayola pipsqueak's glitter glue pens
- small colourful note pads
- erasers
- super bouncy balls
- those bracelet/elastic thingies that are a certain shape (animal, etc) that they resume after being stretched out.
- colourful feathers (from the craft section of the $ store)
- small glittery pom poms (also from the craft section of the $ store)
- chocolate coins
- good quality chocolates (found on sale half price - yay!)

I think that's everything.

It went over very well and the kids were excited and happy about everything they got. I also sewed some drawstring bags from some fun fabric I had for then to take the loot home in.