to ask about your preschooler’s birthday party?

[Kidspartyideasplease]

If you live in a flat/townhouse and have no garden.

For DC’s 4th birthday we would like to throw a kids party, the only option locally seem to be a very expensive soft play package. Everything else seems to be for slightly older children. It’s in June so if the weather is good it seems a shame to be indoors.

Just looking for inspiration really

We hired the local church hall for 2 hours, brought music, food and played party games. Everyone had fun. At that age the parents tend to stay too so you need plenty of space.

April birthday, no big garden here. We’ve booked a church hall for an afternoon. We’re going to take loads of DS’s toys to play with in the hall, do traditional party games and a party tea and ask the children to wear fancy dress. Fun and cheap!

It's all expensive even if you hire a hall, get an entertainer, get food sorted out.
Find out if the soft play has air conditioning. At least in those things it's all done for you.

Picnic and games in the park

We did church hall and a bouncy castle.

We’ve done party games at a local hall, bouncy castle in a scout hut, and a session at a local community farm. Local country parks to us hire out a bbq area and I’ve seen that, with borrowed gazebos and a magician work well too.

Community centre
Church hall
If there's a local play group so with toys etc already there they let you hire it

Try a local leisure centre too, room hire there in NE is cheap.

Church hall, no entertainer but a range of activities on offer provided cheaply via the internet - big colouring in sheet, making party hats, a treasure hunt, pinata etc. At pre school age you'll get a good 15 minutes of fun just out of playing with balloons!

Local leisure centre have an option where they put bouncy castle and inflatables in a hall. Kids play for 1hr then go to separate room for food and cake. We need to organise all good and cake, set up plus tidy up but much cheaper than soft play.

Otherwise hall hire as suggested by PP

To add, soft plays are expensive but everything's in.
Just need to supply party bags.
There would air con.

Dc4 is 4 in spring and we are going for village hall and party games with bouncy castle. We have a garden but not prepared to gamble on the weather. Will do musical bumps, pass the parcel. Party food of cocktail sausages, veg sticks, crisps, crust less sandwiches & party rings. A few balloons for good measure. Will invite preschool friends, his siblings friends whose siblings will be in his class in September too.

Thanks everyone. The minimum spend for a soft play party is £170, and that’s only for 10 children, I don’t actually know how many there are in the nursery class so if there was for example 13 I wouldn’t want to leave 3 children out - but neither could I afford upwards of £200 plus cake/invitations! In which case I’d look into a small village hall and put on some food/games/music.

Do you need to throw a party?

i know you say you’d like to but there’s no way you should stretch yourself beyond your means.

My son had a farm party for his 3rd birthday, do you have any near you? Our local one offers a “VIP” option where the children get to go in and feed the animals, ride the ponies and hold the small animals. They also collected the eggs. All the children and parents loved it and luckily the weather was really nice.

Yes, I would like to celebrate it and invite back all the kids we’ve had invitations from.

Definitely try to rent a church hall then 😄 and just have kids party games. Kids remember the fact they had fun nothing else

Another thing which I did with one of mine for her 5th was have lots of little parties and invite them back in groups. We played a couple of party games with each group and I told a story which led to a treasure hunt or more games. We had them in groups of 3 (so 4 with dd) and they decorated cupcakes instead of a cake.
It wasn't very expensive because I did it at home and just got little toys for the games.

If you use a church hall etc, just ensure you cover the space well e g different activities in different parts of the hall.
Otherwise with 10 children, a hall can be a pretty big space to fill.

For 10 kids, I'd do picnic, games and a treasure hunt in the park but with a back-up plan of floor picnic and traditional party-games back home if weather awful. (Push all the furniture back to the walls, remove anything you can to eg the bedroom, you can get quite a few preschoolers in a small space!) But if the latter just feels impossible then a church or school hall or community centre is your best bet, ideally one with an outside space if the weather is decent.