Ideas for Your Child’s Summer Birthday Party
They say genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. A brilliant birthday party has similar stats. And for a child’s party, the sweat has many sources: Unlike adult parties, kids’ parties have many more component parts. There are invitations, decorations, food and drink, activities, backup activities for when all else fails, and goodie bags. Planning a child’s birthday party entails overseeing every detail, predicting every possible outcome, meeting every tantrum or behavioral aberration with sunny equanimity, and, above all, having fun with it.
Choosing a unifying theme (here’s the inspiration part) can lend focus to a party and give party planners their marching orders. Gone are the days when a be-candled cake and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey constituted the whole shebang-children’s birthday parties have spawned a whole industry of traveling petting zoos, itinerant magicians and roving rent-a-clowns. But a party needn’t be costly and outlandishly elaborate to be fun, however.
First, a theme should reflect your child’s interests or personality. Brainstorm with your child and make the planning a family affair. The theme should be specific enough to say something unique about the birthday boy or girl, but general enough to support a range of activities, snacks and decorations. Before your preparations are in full swing, there are a few questions you need to answer.
How many guests do you hope to invite? The whole first grade class may wreak havoc on an intricate beading party, but be great fun at a less structured poolside “luau.” Is it a single-sex or a coed bash? A costumed princess party, complete with refrigerator-box castle, may be dreamy for the girls, but the little Sir Lancelots may tire of it quickly. A gender-neutral party theme (animals, the circus or even one organized around a hit TV show) may appeal to all invitees. And where is the party going to be held? Outdoors lends itself to all kinds of games and activities (weather permitting, of course). More is better when it comes to activities, and it’s especially nice if a couple of them are vigorous enough to burn off some excess-sugar induced?-energy.
Before the magic day, make sure you have your theme’s supplies at the ready (make a checklist), an itinerary of events (keep parties to a manageable two hours), and enough adults on hand to keep things under control. Here are a few theme ideas to get you started.
Subhead: It’s a Jungle In Here
Invitations: Use animal-print wrapping paper for cards or send toilet-paper roll “binoculars” to invite your guests on safari.
Decorations: Think brown and green crepe paper vines, construction paper leaves and palm trees, and coconuts and bananas strewn about. Have a rainforest sounds tape in the background.
Food and drink:Use cookie cutters to cut sandwiches into animal shapes. And for a “snake cake,” cut two circular Bundt cakes in half, reform them in an S, ice your snake using Life Savers for eyes and red licorice for a tongue (remember to fork it at the end).
Activities: As guests arrive, tape a sign on their backs. Each sign has an animal’s name such as monkey or elephant. To take the sign off your back you have to ask yes-or-no questions about your animal. Or have the little “monkeys” pass peanuts with their toes to teammates, or hang apples from tree branches for the hands-free “giraffe stretch.”
Goodie bags: Make “jungle” drums with oatmeal containers and rubber sheeting and fill them with tropical candies and little animals. Foam animal masks and safari hats are also sold inexpensively.
Subhead: A Day at the (Backyard) Beach
Invitations: Write all the party details on inflatable beach balls and mail them, deflated, to guests, or roll invites, slipping them into plastic bottles filled with sand and seashells as a “message in a bottle.”
Decorations: Cover the buffet table with a beach blanket and then top it off with an old surfboard, then add seashells, fishing nets, tiki torches-with a little steel drum music, surf’s up!
Food and drink: Have kids roast their own hotdogs on sticks, then offer snow cones and punch with a tropical fruit ice ring, served with paper umbrellas, naturally. Cap it off with a “beach cake” decorated with blue frosting and white “waves” and graham cracker crumb “sand.”
Activities: Hide treasures in the sandbox and have a scavenger hunt. A sandcastle-building competition will occupy older kids while the young ones run through the sprinkler.
Goodie bags: Little kids will be thrilled with a new shovel and a bucket (especially if they get to personally decorate their buckets with stickers and colorful pens). For older kids, try a mix of sunglasses, squirt guns and tubes of colored sunscreen.
Subhead: I Spy
Invitations: Send the invite ransom-note style, cutting letters from magazines. For older kids, write invitations in code and provide a “code cracker” on the back.
Decorations: Hanging magnifying glasses, wanted posters of your guests, even big painted question marks set the stage.
Food and drink: Send kids on a spy mission to find each element of their meal. Keep it simple-kids like foods they recognize. Chicken bites, mozzarella and cherry tomatoes on a skewer; cucumber rounds and carrot sticks.
Activities: Hide a ticking bomb (egg timer) for your guests to find in the house.Fingerprint the kids, placing their inked fingers on squares of packing tape. Top the tape with another piece, sticky side to sticky side, and give each guest their own laminated fingerprint. Make a recording of household noises (a door slamming, breaking glass) and have the kids guess what they’re hearing.
Goodie bags: Go for disguises like mustaches or rubber noses
