Entertaining children at a party

[Lucieaew]

We are having our son Baptised at the weekend and I'm wondering if I should try and think of something to entertain the older children so they don't get too out of control. I'm in the last three months of my maternity leave for it needs to be cheap as I'm not getting paid. There will be a boy 15 children there the oldest is 10 the youngest is 2, but they are main,y between 4 and 6 years old. I was thinking balloons but. It sure if this is a good idea, I want them to have fun but I don't want them to be in wild. Any ideas? Thank you in advance.

Have you a garden?

I would do the following

Hide a load of sweets/cheap toys such as bubbles etc in the garden

Set up a basic craft table indoors, with some cheap white bags...or brown is fine. Put out stickers and pens....plain and glittery and have each child decorate a bag.

Then the children have to go and find stuff for their bags. Call it a treasure hunt.

Make sure you keep some hidden for any kids who don't find much and someone will need to assist the tinies.

With the tinies you can follow them about and just drop things in their path when they're not looking...that way you can also control what they find...for example the 2 year old can't have a lollipop...but could have a Freddo.

I'm in the uk it's too cold for anything outdoor so we will be having it at a local social club because we won't fit in our house. I did toy with the idea of waiting for warmer weather but couldn't take the risk of rain and outdoor space was essential.

We had little party bags for the children with cheap things like little colouring books, little toy or whatever dependent on age.
Big Tesco’s have a whole section for party bags and tiger had some good bits; it was pretty cheap

How long will the party last? Anything over an hour or so I think it would be nice to have something for the dc to do but Tbh I have 2 dc of 2.6 and just turned 4 and if we were going to an event we would take colouring books etc with us. Some balloons wouod be nice, and sweets.