Entertain the children yourself at their next party

Do you want to give it a go? Do you want to entertain the children at your child's next party in your local village hall? NOOOOOO I hear you cry! Well it's actually less difficult than you would imagine.

Read this blog post and it will give you some ideas on how to entertain the children at a party.

This blog post is designed for those parents that have booked the local village/church hall and have decided to entertain the children themselves. I've assumed the standard 2 hours for the party, that there are roughly between 20 and 30 kids there, that the age range is 4-7 and that you're a really great dancer!!!

Let the children run around for 10 minutes or so. Have some music playing in the background. This just lets all the last minute arrivals to get there and also gives the children a chance to say hello to each other and burn off some party excitement!

Start the party by getting all the children to stand in a circle. Then say something like "This circles too small. It needs to be bigger. C'mon mums and dads we need a bigger circle"

Get all the kids and their parents/grandparents to get into a big circle. Start the proceedings with the Hokey Cokey.

Once the Hokey Cokey is finished the parents can sit down and continue drinking their cups of tea and gossiping!

Get all the children to sit in a circle and introduce yourself. Say the reason why you're all there. Tease the kids a little bit - get their names wrong. Say you're there to celebrate Mavis' birthday and she's going to be 64. Do the usual pretend you can't hear them and make them shout and encourage them to interact with you.

Then get some music going and encourage some dancing with interactive songs. Buy the Black Lace Party album and get them to dance to songs like Agadoo, Superman, I am the Music Man. If you stand at the front and show them the actions they will be joining in in no time! Other good songs to dance to are "The Fast Food Song" (you know the one - A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and A Pizza Hut), YMCA, The Birdie Song and other old favourites. Make sure you also put some more up to date songs on there too and let them do a bit of disco dancing. You'll probably find that the girls want to dance and the boys just want to run around. But that's ok if they do - it's totally normal.

What I like to do is then have the food. The best way to do this is to get the children to line up with you at the front and then do the Conga to the food tables.

If you really want to make your life easy then get the food organised by using food lunch boxes rather than having it all plated up and set out for them. This way it is then really easy to serve and probably more importantly clear up afterwards.

Not all children eat at the same speeds and not all children eat the same amount. So expect that some children will finish before others. That's ok too! Just pop the music back on and let them dance and run around until all the children have finished eating.

After food I like to play some games. Obviously you have the old classics like Musical Chairs, Musical Bumps and Musical Statues. I like to also play corners. Get the children to decide which parents should be picked to stand in each corner and before the party buy silly hats for 4 parents to wear. Obviously the sillier the better!

There are loads of party games out there that you can play. Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Pass the Parcel etc. If you want a games pack sending out then get in touch and I'm happy to send you some ideas.

I also like to play "Find Bob Monkeyhouse". All you need to do is buy an inflatable monkey before the party and hide it before the children arrive. The concept of "Find Bob Monkeyhouse" is pretty simple - they have to find the monkey!

 

Another game that the children like to play is "Feargal The Sharkey". For this you have to have 2 inflatable palm trees in two corners of the room and an inflatable Shark (do you see what I did there??). The premise of the game is that you chase the children with the shark and they have to run between the 2 trees which are "den". The children absolutely love this game but in my experience it does get a bit boisterous. You can play it for as long as you have breath in your body and the kids are relatively calm.

What I tend to do to get them to calm down after Feargal The Sharkey is play "Dead Fishes" or "Sleepy Lions" as it's known in this part of the world.

Before the party have a think about how you can rope in friends/family into the celebration. Does anybody have any special talents? Face painting, story telling etc. You might also want to sort out the music before the party so you know what track is going to be played and when. Make sure that you have a running order so things in your head so there is a relaxed structure to what you're doing but it's something you can deviate from. So if you find that the kids are really enjoying playing one particular game then maybe play it again.

By the time you've sang Happy Birthday, blown out the candles etc it should be time for everybody to leave.

You then clean up, hopefully get a thank you from your child, go home and pour yourself a large glass of wine and remind yourself it is all over for another year!

So go on give it a try - what's the worst that can happen?? Actually don't answer that!

Let me know how it goes! Don't forget that here at Life's A Celebration we have all your party supplies. If you decide to give this a go then get your party box from us and you'll be sorted.

Alternatively if you're local to me - give me a shout and I'll come and help out and bring a Party in a Box too!!!

Keep smiling

Max
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