Whole class birthday invite.. or just friends?

[JusWunderin]

DD started reception. Absolutely LOVES school. Her birthday is at the end of the year and she’s really keen to have a birthday party with friends.
I’ve asked her who the friends are she’s like to invite and she’s named 5 friends.

the problem is.. isn’t it more the norm to invite the whole class? Or is that old school now? I don’t actually want to invite her whole class, I don’t see the point. Especially as she says one boy is not nice to everyone. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable at her own party with people there who she isn’t that friendly with?

but I also don’t want hurt feelings in school.

im thinking it might be better to either slip the invite to the parents on the school run, or just exchange phone number and invite that way instead? As invites handed out in class is going to cause questions from those not invited 🥲

My son gets invited to some and not others. He's 5. It's fine, it's a good lesson that they can't be invited to everything. He always gets invited to parties of his closer friendship group.

If your child wants the full class there then go for it, but don't force it.

Honestly it doesn’t matter; in my DDs reception year (not long ago) there was a mixture and there was no issues. Just make sure your DD knows that saying to other children you can’t come to my party is unkind; that is more of a year 1 issue though.

She’s just started reception and her birthday is the end of the year? She’ll have changed friendship groups twelve times over by then!

Less than half the class, or everyone, is a good rule of thumb.

It depends what you want to do. A community room with entertainer is a different scenario to taking 6 kids pottery painting.

As long as you aren't singling out one or two not to invite from the whole class, its fine to give invites out in class.

We did whole class invites for Reception and Year 1, Year 2 we limited to half the class. My DS gave out the invites in class.

It is also good for them to learn at a young age that you don't get invited to everything. The first one or two my DS was upset about but not he isn't bothered.

Her friends will also change on a weekly basis at this stage depending on who she plays with each day. My DS still flits between different people weekly but has a core group of best friends that have stuck.

I always think you should go small number or everyone so 5 kids is absolutely fine. What you can't do is invite, like, 25 out of 30.

Yeh invite the whole class if you can

DD's school is very odd though. There was only one class party in reception and in pre school there was just two and one of those was DD's. Not exactly a small cohort of kids either, I did expect the millions of invites that I had been warned about.

We did not have enough weekends spare to go to all class parties and never had them ourselves

Parents seem to have more issues on who is invited or not than the kids

We had a mix. Most of the whole class ones were 2 kids at once at soft play or something.

Mine wanted to invite friends who weren't from school as well, so I said she could choose 15 friends, she invited about 10 from school and 5 nursery friends. Out of those about 10 could come and it was a nice size party.

It's a few weeks into term, you have no idea if those 5 friends will be her friendship group by the time her birthday comes around. As others have said, not inviting the whole class is fine as long as you aren't inviting the whole class excluding 1 or 2 specific children, but at this age friendships are so changeable anyway and it is good for her to mix with a range of kids not just stick to the first few people she gets on with.

Inviting 5 friends to a 5th birthday sounds perfect but it’s too early to send invitations now.

It’s a mix here, both completely fine. Do what suits you 😊

Also, as one of the first birthdays, you help set the precedent. A lot of the other parents won’t know what the norm is either!

Everyone always did whole class for the first two years or so of school when DS was that age, purely on the grounds that they haven’t usually made firm friends yet, or those friends change on a weekly basis. If I’d sent out invitations to five friends three weeks in advance of DS’s fifth birthday party, he’d have stopped playing with them and moved on to five entirely different people at least once before the party.

Decide nearer the time.

It depends on what you're doing - for DD's birthday when she was at nursery I hired a big hall and invited all of the kids who were going to school with her after the summer - about 24 in all.
This year she is in P1 so we're doing something much smaller with her 4 friends.

Ours are mostly whole class, and it is a nice way to get to know them all, but they are small classes so it’s not the same as if you have 30 to invite.

I think most people agree it’s fair to invite half or less, or all. So a small party is absolutely fine, what wouldn’t be fine would be invite everyone except the boy she doesn’t like.

If her birthday is next summer I would chill out about it for now. You can listen to her ideas for her party (my kids like to start planning theirs about 11 months in advance!) but most likely she’ll go to lots of parties in the next few months and her ideas will change. She might go to a whole class party and decide it’s the best thing ever (my youngest) or she might find that many kids in a hall super overwhelming and decide it’s definitely not for her (my eldest). Either the whole class or 5 friends is fine.

What does the child want to do? And would you be able to manage (space/money) a whole class invitation?

Until she was maybe 10, my dd1 always wanted to invite the whole class, plus a few other friends, but it was doable. And I’m glad she did. I still remember the little boy (maybe 8) who said, ‘Thank you for inviting me to your party. Nobody else does.’ 😰

As long as you are not sending the Invites to school then a friends only party Is the way to go

At that age, mostly had whole-class - but if she has specified 5 individuals what's the problem? cheaper for you too!

If your daughter has asked for 5 friends to attend, I would do just that. Even at that age some children don't like massive parties with lots of noisy children running around uncontrollably. It can overwhelm them.

DS is 8 and has mostly been invited to parties with a few friends - only 1 or 2 all class parties. For DS' birthday we invited 9 friends

I only did 4 or 5 friends. Never did a whole class party.

It's at the end of the calender year or the end of the academic year?
Surely she is only 2 weeks in, so wont have got to know anyone well yet, and invites only need to go out maybe a month before, so even if it's December, no need to decide anything now.
I would generally go broader than 5 for reception party, maybe 10-15. We did whole class for both in reception, but both my girls are in classes of about 20. Then we did 10-12 in year 1 and 2. Year 3 was 6 friends and year 4 was 3 friends

Sorry, her birthday is end of the calendar year, so December.

I don’t plan on even thinking about actually planning the birthday party yet.. I just suddenly had that daunting thought of what happens when it comes to it!

thanks all. We’ll stick to a small group. I wouldn’t invite the whole class anyway, it would be 5 friends or a family party 😂 I don’t have the patience for a whole class.

To be fair you might find you are leaving it a bit late if you want to book something party-wise. Don’t leave it too long like I normally do