Party ideas 5 year old boy

[parentingtwo]

Any ideas for my son's 5th party that doesn't cost hundreds and hundreds? His 3rd birthday we did village hall with soft play bits, 4th party we did Jump In and I'm lost on what to do!

All our parties at this age were soft play. They need to just run around. A few have tried swimming parties but there are a lot of children who can’t swim independently still at 4/5 so it’s not the safest. I’d just do soft play with whatever options they provide for food. I think it was £9.50 per child when we did it last year for 1.5 hours play plus hot lunch after. We invited 10-12 children, so with our 2 and an extra friend for the older one about £150 plus cake and a few party bag bigs, less than £200 total. There won’t be much cheaper unless you do a small tea and cake at home, which is doable but really only with a handful of friends, otherwise it’s difficult to manage.

Do you have a local leisure centre? Ours hire out one of the sports halls with bouncy castles and uoj provide your own food.

A couple of the community centres near us also hire out their halls with a bouncy castle, plus use of their kitchen. We've also been to a couple of community centre parties where Elsa/Spiderman/etc. appeared and led the children through some games.

I did do one party in a community centre with just a pile of balloons and party games (lots of rounds of musical statues!), but that was the back up plan. The kids had fun, and was certainly cheap, but it was definitely more work.