To ask why more people don't have birthday parties at home for their children?

[suebfg]

Maybe it's a phenomenon where I live but all the parties my DS has been invited to (he's rising 4 yrs old) are at play barns/gyms. I find these so impersonal - what has happened to the traditional birthday party with pass the parcel, musical statues etc? Please tell me it's still out there.

We have done both our dd is in the summer so we have it in the garden and the boys winter so we normally hire a hall. Nothing to do with keeping up with Jones just practical.

over the years ive done parties at home with 30 tots and magician a few times and a clown and the ones at activity world and farms/barn and the ones the kids have enjoyed best were the ones at home we have hard flooring though throughout and a double garage converted into a playroom so i hurd them all in there see a magic act/ puppet show then we used to play the usual games ,pass the parcel, pin the tail , musical chairs have the food laid out , and have the party bags ready and cake cut before they go ive 3 kids and two of them are a year and a day apt so we used to always have a double party they are older now so we have sleepovers and shopping with the gfs , ice skating, cinema & a meal or sledging/tubbing in the snow, paintballing. by far the cheaper was doing it at home though and lovely memories much nicer than the ones that others were hosting and actually the kids rarely made much mess they were better behaved than adults at a party tbh

thats it altinkum restrict them to a certain part of the house remove breakables lay something over the carpet if you have to and put the toys away or there will be tantrums later if anything goes missing or gets broken then its a big broom and a mop but as i say i always found adult parties worse to clean up after lol i have as aqua says had it in the garden before but my dcs birthdays early may and cant always guarantee the good weather

Smileandwave, if I had a double converted garage, I'd be more than happy to have parties at home. In a 3bed small semi, it's not quite the same appeal to have 20 6 yr olds going mad

I'd disagree about it being easy if you keep toys and breakables out of the way. It takes for ever to move everything upstairs, then back again late

*later