To not invite the whole class?

[FruitCider]

It’s DChilds birthday soon and we are hiring a soft play for their party. The teacher seemed a bit aghast when I put invites into the kids book bags this morning, apparently it’s “not the done thing” and “at this age people tend to invite the whole class”.

DChild only wanted to invite 14 from school in total and some of those aren’t in her class. Have I made a massive error?!?! Completely stressing about it now!

Ask the teacher does school contribute to party costs.

Sounds fine.

Fuck inviting thirty kids to soft play. Would cost a fortune

Ofcourse it's fine. What isn't fine is when people invite a whole class or sports team and leave out ONE child. That is appalling.

Seems odd. Did you wait until all the kids had sat down then go to the cloak room to put in their bag or did you go along whilst they were queuing up?

Any way it’s uo to you not her. I really couldn’t get het up over this?!

Depends on the school - at my dcs school it's fine, although considered bad form to invite more than half the class but not all. However other local schools are all class parties at reception age, but it's also the norm to have joint parties with other children with close birthdays. (So in effect it's unusual at that school to pay for more than 15 - my friend with dcs at that school was very happy to discover there were 3 other children with birthdays within a fortnight of her DS!)

If the invites are put in the book bags rather than handed out, I guess it doesn't really matter as they won't know they didn't get invited.

My son had 18 in his class so inviting 14 would’ve been a bit mean, but if he has 30 in the class then inviting 14 is absolutely fine!

My DS has had 2 soft play parties when he was in nursery and reception he asked 10 friends to both.

Rules at our school is that it's fine to not invite the whole class but in that situation you are not allowed to hand out invites at school - must be organized outhwith school which seems fair

I’ve never invited the whole class, some do but most don’t at our school.

Yes - send the invites independently of school.

Whether it's bad form depends on class size. If you've invited 14/20 then that's likely to cause some ill feeling.

Tell teacher if she wants to cough up, she can invite who she likes. Otherwise it’s your business. The only thing I’d avoid in future is putting invites directly in the book bags.

Sod that for a game of soldiers. Teachers cannot dictate who to invite. I usually hand invites after school.

We had this recently at our son’s nursery class (attached to the school). Half the class was invited to a party at a soft play. Then the inevitable questions come from DS about the party as others were talking about it in school. Awkward to tell him he wasn’t going. What was more awkward though was that there was some sort of back up list so when the first wave of declines came, the second round of children were invited. Our son still wasn’t invited. I couldn’t help but feel very left out on his behalf, especially when the whole thing was plastered all over Facebook and it seemed as though pretty much every other kid and their parents were there 😳

As long as you invited less than half the class it's totally fine. Don't think we've ever invited as many as 14.

Back up lists are bad form though unless pulled from a totally separate pool of friends.

Fuck that shit! We've only invited 8!! My mum is paying for DD's party and has booked for 10 kids, but as DD is one of the 10 and my nephew is on the list also, that only leave 8 invites for school friends.

Birthday parties are bloody expensive! I wasn't going to do one at all this year but my mum insisted and its her present to DD...

Screw what the teacher thinks, cheeky sod!!!

Stop stressing...what did you day?

The only correct response it to laugh and then say "30 kids? Good one, for a minute I thought you were serious!"

I have never had a whole class party 10 max. Neither DS have ever been to a whole class party and to my knowledge haven't been excluded from any (or were blissfully unaware that they were).

For context around here the whole class party would cost you almost £330 and that's before any party bags and a cake!

Stuff that.

This is the second thread in as many months where some people seem to think it's ok to open other children's bookbags! No, it's not! As I said on the other thread, all sorts of home/school communications go in bookbags and as a parent I would not think very well of you if I knew you were potentially rummaging through my child's belongings. I'm surprised the teacher didn't say something more.

Inviting half the class is OK but I'm astonished you got near the bookbags. It isn't allowed for parents to just go into the corridors in my experience of schools. Next time get your DC to give them out in the playground before or after school.

How are you supposed to give invitations out to people on the playground, who you have no contact with if those families are never on the playground because they work?

DS1's first party was a class party so no one was left out anyway, but I couldn't extract more than about 4 names out of him so had to write "dear classmate" 29 times. The only way to invite people was by the invitations being put in to book bags as we weren't anywhere near the playground between 8:05 and 17:50.

We've recently invited all the boys as there's an imbalance in the class with less boys. Trying to invite 8 or so would have been too divisive as a small number would have been left out.

It was stay and read morning today, I was in the class until 09:20 and asked the teacher if I could put the invites in the book bags which were in drawers in the classroom as I’m not sure who some of the children are by face or which parents belong to which child the teacher said it was fine, I invited 8/30 children in that class based on names my child gave me.

When she said I should have invited all 30 I pulled a yuck face and said “I’m not paying £450 for a party for a 5 year old!!!”

* This is the second thread in as many months where some people seem to think it's ok to open other children's bookbags! No, it's not! As I said on the other thread, all sorts of home/school communications go in bookbags and as a parent I would not think very well of you if I knew you were potentially rummaging through my child's belongings. I'm surprised the teacher didn't say something more.*

Well in my child’s school they are used for children’s books and newsletters, they wouldn’t be so daft to expect children to take home confidential letters reliably

We give invitations to the teacher.

The teacher seemed a bit aghast when I put invites into the kids book bags this morning, apparently it’s “not the done thing

It’s not the done thing for parents to put things in book bags in any school I’ve ever worked in! If it was my classroom, I would have said no.

As a naive NQT-I once agreed to give out a vast pile of party invitations to my class at the end of the day. I assumed it was for the whole class but as it turns out, the Mum had invited everyone except two boys. By the time I had taken the line of children out to their parents, both boys was in floods of tears and the parents came in really pissed off-at me to begin with! It took a minute to work out what had happened but I explained it to the mums. I will not give out party invites now.

If your child is having a party-give the invites out yourself before or after school.

Fine at out school not to invite the whole class. Although teachers pass them out/put them in book bags in reception.
It is a good lesson for the dc to know that although it's nice to be friendly to everyonr and kind we can't invite everyone child to their party and they are not to be upset if they don't get invited to every party either.
Seems to work well for us