4 year old party etiquette?

[Hedgehog150]

Probably a simple question but he's my first child so haven't done this before! My DS is turning 4 in November. He goes to preschool and will have most of the kids from last year in his class this year, about 30 in total.

He loves soft play so I wanted to book a softplay party for him. However, I don't have the budget to invite his whole class. Would it be wrong to just ask him to name say, 10 friends to invite, and just message those parents individually?

I don't want to offend anyone but I do want to make sure my DS has his friends there!

TIA

Meant to add that we only went to two parties last year and they were both whole class ones.... but were based at the children's' houses, so a bit different. My house definitely isn't big enough for that option.

Why not just invite his actual buddies, like 3 kids?

Minimum number for a party package is 10 in our area though.

Personally I think it's a bit mean to invite only 10 from the class as at that age friendships are so fluid, I'd ask him to chose 3 or 4 special friends and take them out for soft play and then McDonald's. Alternatively you could book a hall with a bouncy castle so numbers aren't an issue

Whole class parties are common at this age but inviting 10 is absolutely fine too.

I totally disagree that it is a mean thing to do. If you have a class of 30 and invited 28 or 29 of them, that would be mean because you would be deliberately excluding just 1 or 2 children and they would feel left out.

If your dc loves soft play but a whole class party is too expensive then a soft play party for 10 is a great idea.

Inviting 10 is fine as long as there's no special circumstances like 11 boys in the class so you're leaving 1 out.

Helpful replies, thank you. I think he'd want a mix of boys and girls just from the names he normally mentions, but will be mindful of that.