joint christening and party for 3yr old - entertainment ideas?

[jenthehen]

To save on organisation and catering I am considering a joint party for 3yr old ds and christening for dd. I also hope it will help to stem any jealousy from ds. I plan to hold the celebration in the village hall and will do the catering myself. There will be approx 30 adults and 10 children under 5. I want to keep it quite simple and low key but feel I should have some entertainment or games for the children. Does anyone have any ideas?
I,ve also seen those pinata's,they look good fun but how do they work, would they be suitable for this age range? How do you stop them becoming a massive scramble resulting with some children getting no gifts?
I need to organise this in only 3wks so any ideas greatly received!

Friend did same entertainments for ds1 3rd birthday and ds2 1st birthday this year - played nursery rhymes on his guitar. Nearly all the children (ages 6mth to 5) loved this - and those that didn't were busy playing with toys. Do you know anyone who could do the music, then have couple of boxes of toys? Generally find with parties at this age that the 'organised bits' get in the way of the kids having fun together, you just have to find a way to start them off...

Thanks, that's a lovely idea! I don't really know anyone who is really musial but reasurring to know that children will probably entertain themselves. I could always cheat and play a tape or even involve all the relatives and get them to take turns in leading a song!

Hi Jenthehen,

Sounds like a good idea to combine the two and I expect it will be less work in the end.
As far as entertainment goes it depends on the budget - Children love hired entertainers - a clown, face painter, punch and judy etc but if you are watching the pennies then maybe you could set up a craft table (I did this for Dd who was 2 a couple of weeks ago) On one end of the table they could make teddy bear puppets (just peices of cardboard cut into teddybear shapes with a lollypop stuck on the back) with loads of sticky on things and on the other end of the table I had loads of teddy bear biscuits, some bowls of icing and some sweets etc that they could stick on.
I also borrowed a bouncy castle from a friend which was brilliant.
ELC do giant snakes and ladders and other games

Will try and think of some more ideas and come back to you!

HTH anyway!

Jules x