Birthday party tomorrow, need ideas! Small party for ds turning 4.

[reezley]

I've done a few parties at our house before, always kind of planning at the last minute, but for some reason I'm coming up blank on this one!  I wasn't going to have a real "kid" party for ds, since he doesn't have close friends yet, and we already celebrated with my parents last weekend, but ds talks about wanting a party....  so I did casually invite about 3 kids he knows to come tomorrow afternoon for a short party, after school lets out for older ds (in K) and the other kids who are coming. 

So, the age range is 4-7.   Boys and girls.   We have no theme, last year we did dinosaurs and ds is still sort of into them.   I have no cake or cupcakes or anything yet.   I have no games planned, but we do have a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey that we tried last weekend for a couple minutes.   3pm after school is a bit of a weird time for a party, kids might be a little wiped out from the day, so we should probably be a little mellow (?), and definitely have a snack.    Any ideas for me??   I'm picturing deviled eggs... is my ds the only kid who likes them?  I can't get my thoughts organized on this one, and it's tomorrow....

[lonegirl]

Sounds fun, I would recommend a few other snacks though.  My ds also loves deviled eggs, but I know neither of my neices does.  Maybe some cheese and sliced up fruit or hummus with pita (again not all kids like hummus)?  How about some colouring or simple craft projects?  Enjoy and happy birthday to your little guy.

[HollyBearsMom]

Yes, you need snacks if the party is right after school! And unless you know these kids well I would go for fun/kid friendly. My son adores deviled eggs but he stopped bringing them school because so many kids complained about the smell. I say offer them since your kids likes them but some other things too.

• Kids love to dip so hummus and crackers and veggies with ranch style dressing are good.
• Fruit kabobs are fun, especially if you use pretzel sticks as the stick.  Make a sweet yogurt dip for dipping
• Cubes of cheese with pretzel "toothpick" were always a hit with my sons friends.
• Do you have a dinosaur cookie cutter?  You can buy or make a huge sheet pan pizza and cut into Dino shapes or any other shape you might have.  My son (at 9!) still love his pizza in shapes. 

Do you have good table that would fit all the kids? I would kick off the party by putting the snacks in the center and adding cups of crayons/marker and stacks of construction paper for coloring. if you are feeling ambitious print some dinosaurs (or whatever the theme is) off the computer cut out and then add some glue stick so the kids can decorate the paper.  The kids can eat, color and decorate.  You can then move on to pin-the tail and maybe musical chairs or Simon Says.  Then wrap it up with cake/cookie/cupcakes.

Have fun!!

[hakeber]

I hope this is not too late:

At my son's bIrthday parties for 4 and 5 we laid out on a table a big bowl filled with ice and stacked with juice boxes in assorted flavors, and in a large basket small packets of pretzles and crackers and on another large platter slices of fruit and veg with a dip in the middle for the veg,

Then we have a coloring table with loads of print outs.

We do a round of musical cushions (chairs are dangerous at that age) or dancing statues with a prize for the last two standing and a round of pin the tail on something, and/or  a scavenger hunt (last year I hid little stars I had cut out of cardboard and wrapped up in foil all over the yard and the team that found the most inside of five minutes won and prize, the year before we collected a dozen toilet roll tubes and wrote numbers on them and each tube corresponded to a different little wrapped present -- just like a wee dinosaur, or a tiny tub of play-doh).  I also had a video up my sleeve in case the kids were not into games for whatever reason...and if it's hot out where you are you can never go wrong with a water ballon toss! And then the cake and then a pinata and then everyone goes home with a little baggie full of goodies from the pinata and a slice of cake.

This has been a good recipe for a party for us.

[reezley]

Thanks for all the ideas so far!  I'm getting a little inspired - the party's today and I still don't have it all worked out. ... I have a bunch of good snacks and I love the idea of putting out a bunch of coloring stuff even while they're snacking.  I'm going to do that!

[mumkimum]

I've seen an idea before for turning hardboiled eggs into 'egg-people' (a la mr.potatohead) with toothpicks, other veggies.  Might be fun for kids who didn't even like hb eggs as an activity-snack.  Decorating otherwise plain cupcakes could work too.

If you have (and trust these kids with them) fabric markers you could have all the kids decorate a plain shirt for your ds as part of the party.  It's a fun memento for the birthday kid and an art-related activity.  Musical chairs, duck duck goose, or bean bag tossing (with kitchen bowls or buckets) are fun simple activities since you have more kids around.