To ask what you have been doing for your kid's birthday's during lockdown?

[AngryAngel]

My little girl is going to be 8 next week. I have been in denial about it tbh. Have you any ideas to make her lockdown birthday party special? We are lucky as she has siblings to contribute to birthday cheer. So far my ideas are:

1. Pretend sleepover in the living room. Popcorn. Film. "Midnight" (as if!, We would all be snoring by 10pm at the latest) feast.
2. Participation in cake making (yay or nae? Is the surprise nicer?)
3. We have disco lights somewhere, so a crazy family dance off.
4. I honestly cannot think of anything else.

Help, please!

My son is turning 9 soon and I’m clean out of ideas too! Our ice cream man is doing socially distanced ice cream delivery if you order in advance and pay by phone so we are going to arrange for a birthday sundae. Other than that idk

Video call with friends/relatives? Include party games that don't involve actually needing to be in the same room, e.g. bring me an item coloured red (which can continue all the way through the rainbow). You can bring the cake in to the room so everyone can sing Happy Birthday.

My ds was 8 today!
We've had cake, kind of a free for all on food/switch time/ sweets all day. Grandparents visited yesterday in the nice weather.
Tonight we've got 'happy meals' and fries and nuggets in paper bags, and ice cream sundaes.
I got his friends mums to send me a little clip of them all saying happy birthday which I made onto a little vid on iMovie.

Can you do a hunt with clues for presents? Our kids love this and it lasts longer than just giving them gifts.

Lots of balloons, and banners, to brighten up the room.

Set up an ice cream sundae bar in the kitchen, with as many ice cream flavours as you can buy, wafers, sprinkles, choc chips, sauces etc to be served in your best sundae dishes!

Zoom calls with relatives. Maybe a birthday quiz, with all the questions about the birthday girl.

We hid all her presents so she had to find them, had a day off home learning, had balloons, she had a zoom call with her friends, we had cake and a socially distanced walk in the park with her nan

My sons is at the end of June, but he will be turning five so much easier to please.

I’m assuming we still have to stick to six people meeting up so we’re going to the park where his Grandma, uncle will meet us. We’re going to have a picnic, a few games and open presents there. People who can’t be there are going to send a video message so I can put it together as one video.

These are all brilliant ideas! I'll get back and try some of these out.

Da is a bit older but we are having a virtual gaming party. I’m going to drop a party bag on the doorstep of a couple of friends and they can eat sweets and play fifa together online

It was dd1's 9th birthday last month and she wanted "surprises".

We did a zoom party with some of the kids from school, did an escape room in the spare room and did a pretend funfair in the garden.

For Ds 4th birthday we did presents as usual. I made him a cake and we sing happy birthday. We did him an afternoon tea on proper cake stands in the garden. We bought him a bike so he played with that all afternoon. It's so hard. He really wanted a party poor kid.

Oh and family and his little best friend from nursery sent videos of them saying (and singing!) Happy birthday.

To be fair seeing his little best friend singing him happy birthday made his day (and broke my heart!)

We've had: black tie dinner party for an adult' birthday, sports themed fancy dress BBQ for a young teen, fancy vintage tea party for a child and a posh take away for another adult. We're going to have a padding pool party but weather turned. Good luck.

It's DD's birthday tomorrow. We have arranged for a bouncy castle and Disney princesses to come and sing a song in the garden (socially distanced)

How about candles to blow out for every meal for the day?

DS was 8 last month. I turned the house into hogwarts the night before and hid all his presents, he had to follow the marauders map and clues to find his presents which he loved. After that we just mostly spent the day playing with his gifts, DP took him for a bike ride, he decorated his cake (I usually do this but he wanted to do it this year and it killed some time), we had a few FaceTime calls with family and a group one where everyone sang happy birthday. Local family stood in the front garden and he showed them some of his new toys. I was worried he’d be bored but he announced it was ‘the best birthday ever’

OneIsAWorldOfBooks
How did you turn it into Hogwarts? It's my son's 9th tomorrow and thanks to my daughter having a temp on monday and now waiting a covid test result, I haven't been able to go food shopping or do anything yet for his birthday. Help needed please

@TheNortherner I had some hanging decorations off amazon but mostly just used stuff I had. I renamed all of the rooms in the house various HP themed things eg the bathroom became moaning myrtles bathroom and I wrote on the mirror in lipstick that the chamber of secrets had been opened, downstairs loo became the chamber of secrets and I stuck a load of snake toys in there, I hung all his cards from the ceiling like the scene in HP where all the letters from hogwarts get delivered, made an owlery with bird teddies of DSs. Have a look on Pinterest that’s where I got most of the ideas from.

My daughter was a couple of years younger but we did a treasure hunt in the garden (each clue had a few smarties or chocolate buttons or toffee popcorn) and the last one led to a present. We did whatsapp group call to relatives for singing happy birthday and blowing out candles. She chose all the meals all day. We dressed up in party clothes and she had a 'makeover' with nail varnish a tiny bit of makeup and curled her hair. Had music and dancing and balloons.

@OneIsAWorldOfBooks

Thanks love the chamber of secrets...definitely copying!

My DC are a bit younger, but I decorated the sitting room the night before with lots of balloons and some sweets. Baked a cake and made jelly the night before and got lots of nice food. Gave presents and FaceTimed family and school friends in the morning. They got new bikes as their main presents, so they spent the rest of the day on those. I was really worried they were going to be upset about not having a party with their friends, but they said they had the best day ever! Very relieved! Also, saved loads of money as got a refund from the trampoline park for the party booking.

Just had my dd's yesterday- she's a few years older- had 3 friends for a socially distanced picnic on a green patch just near our house , it was fabulous considering 1 week earlier she wouldn't have been able to see anyone at all.

We let dd (8) decide. I think being given the freedom to decide herself (lockdown permitting) was a gift in itself!

All she wanted was a few presents, cake, pizza, a movie and to drop cake off to a few friends.

No zoom parties, complicated games or anything. She just wanted to play with her new toys really. She doesn't even have siblings.
She still said it was her favourite birthday ever - go figure!

DD1 turned 7 in April. I did a little spa day for her and DD2 (mini facials, which was basically massaging moisturiser on while they lay there with slices of cucumber on their eyes, and mani/pedi). They both though it was fantastic, and kept talking about their "relaxing day at the spa" (too much YouTube I think...) We then had a tea party with a traditional afternoon tea, and birthday cake. It wasn't exactly the birthday she had envisioned (gymnastics party, which was cancelled by lockdown), but she still had a great day.

DD turned 4 this week. We did a pirate treasure hunt for her presents, all the rooms were different parts of the ship, ie loft room was the crows nest, living room was the hold. In each location we video called friends/family (who were the pirate crew) to give her the next clue. We made the cake together, and then I decorated it by myself as a surprise.