Help me plan my 7yo's birthday party

[willibug]

My ds will be 7 in a couple of weeks. Believe it or not, we've had only one birthday party for him, and that was when he was one. Anyway, he wants a party this year, so we have invited 7 of his friends to our house. I'm really out of touch as far as kids' parties go, so I'm looking for help in planning games and activities for this group. We don't have a theme in mind, so I'm just looking for generally fun stuff, preferably which I can do on a small budget. DS has thought of Pin The Tail On The Airplane, so we're going to get some posterboard and he plans to do the artwork himself. But what else can we do? Any ideas or tips would be greatly appreciated! I don't know what the weather will be like, but we do have outdoor space available, weather permitting.

Thanks in advance !

[khrisday]

Well, pin the tail on the airplane is a GREAT place to start! I love to theme parties, and going with the airplane theme you could have the kids make paper airplanes and do a paper airplane contest with prizes for the most creative, longest flight, highest, longest airborne, etc. You could also get those really cheapie wooden gliders, and parachute men as part of the gift bags. It's always fun to have the kids decorate the gift bags with markers and stickers, and that way they have another craft to entertain them as well.

[EnviroBecca]

Relay races are great for that age group! You could continue the airplane theme by having them pretend to be airplanes (hold out arms and make sound effects) as they race across the yard and deliver "passengers" or "cargo" (some type of small toys) to the destination and see which team can do it first. Or get 2 globes or maps and have the teams race to a list of destinations--have an adult supervise each team as they find Borneo, Peru, Denmark, etc. (Use countries on a world map, states on a U.S. map, or towns on a state map.)

If you have several weeks to plan, try American Science & Surplus for cool cheap prizes!

[LEmama]

My older son is 7 and likes to help us in the kitchen. You could invite your guests to make their own mini-pizzas or decorate cupcakes. One year I made giant cookies as part of their party favor - the kids loved them! To go with the cookies, I bought some nice metal matchbox airplanes & trucks, sunglasses, stickers & pens and water toys etc. from the $1 store. They were all packaged so I ended up just taping/tying a gift to a wrapped cookie, putting them in a basket, and letting the kids choose.

I really like the suggestion of using maps or globes to tie-in with your pin-airplane activity. We have a big earth ball (about 4ft. tall) that we have used at our outdoor parties - wish we could lend it to you! The kids love to roll/chase it!

[Linda in Arizona]

If you still have time, you could make a pinata together. It takes a while since the paper mache has to dry, but it would be great fun (and cheap) to make one. You can mostly get decoration somewhere in on the internet or at the library.

Most kids expect to get some sort of goodie bag at the end of the party. You can make the bags by decorating paper sacks, punching holes at the top and running yarn through. At my DD's birthday party in a few weeks we will put fruit snacks, stickers and water paints in the goodie bags.