children's party, need help....

[UpYourViva]

DD is having her 5th bday party in Jan, i just needed to know:

1. how soon do i give out invitations?

2. how do i go about giving out invitations at school?

3. how do i even find out which children to invite? (dd doesnt really know everyones name yet)

Id be extremely greatful for some help

when in Jan is the party? If it's right after term starts, then give them out before the Christmas hols but if it's later in Jan, give them out in good time to get replies in but not so early thaty people will forget about the invitation.
At dcs' school invitations are often given to the teacher to distribute but it depends on whetehr you're inviting a large proportion of the class and some teachers object to handing out personal invitations if they're not for the whole class (understandable).
As for names - your school office will have a list of names in each class for you to look at probably.

sorry for typos - trying to do too many things at once (and none of them very well!)

Thankyou

Its Jan 9th, so i figured giving them out at the begining of the school term is too late? but like you said i dont wanna give them out too early incase people forget.

Im useless at this stuff!

does your term start again on 4th? That might be cutting it a bit fine but if you send them to school at end of this term, just make sure they're in brightly coloured envelopes so they don't get swallowed up with the glut of letters that come home from school at the end of term! Make sure you pop a note in to ask for replies to please be done by a certain date - no-one will think you are rude and it saves you having to follow up with lots of parents - bear in mind that there will always be parents who don't bother replying but who will turn up with their kid (rude IMO but a fact of school life it seems)
I found it easier with my dcs to do a bit of an all inclusive invitation in reception as dcs often haven;t made particular groups of friends by then and it saves missing out dcs....for ds2, who was in recep last year we went for all the boys in the class for his birthday as we couldn't stretch to paying for all of the class but didn't want to invite some but not all of the boys. It gets easier once dcs are older and have more established groups of friends!

I got a class list from the school office for dd's party and she took the invites in a couple of weeks before the party. I invited her class (23 pupils) and her teacher let her hand them out in the morning. There were a couple of girls invited from a different class but I knew who their mums were and gave those ones out for her.

I put my mobile number on the invite and some people texted/phoned me rather than send the tear off slip back. 8 people never responded at all but luckily they didnt turn up unexpectedly at the party (although I had made extra party bags just in case)

Thankyou

Ill do as you said and get a list of childrens names, think i will give the invites out at the end of this term towards christmas.

Thanks for the help ladies