Kids Party - 4 year old - at Nursery

[ChildrenAreTheFuture]

Kids party. Money isn’t a factor.

Do you invite whole class of 25 kids or just select friends?

We are having it at a soft play centre.

Exclusive use is 20 kids. Otherwise party while others play.

Anyone wiser than me have any birthday 🎁 tips?

Their school fund raises instead of teacher presents at Christmas - that’s a good idea

Sorry - for exclusive use it’s 20 minimum.

So if I pay for 20 kids no matter how many come we get whole thing to ourselves.

Think place holds up to 50 kids.

That’s fair - will just say no presents and leave it at that.

It was the first thing on a google search. 👀

So I’m going to do the following based on your collective wisdom:

• Get a simple printed invite
• Say your presence is the present type thing but nothing else
• Ask teachers to hand out to whole class
• We can follow up with separate text with parents we see and talk to every day anyway
• Go for exclusive hire - pay for 20 and we can add more if needed (or add in siblings of guests or twins cousins to make it up to a decent number if few responses)
• Do catering and cake
• Plan for party bags - taking on board suggestions (except the bouncing ball - I hate them!)

Thank you 🙏 that’s saved me a few missteps!

Yes, definitely invite everyone and do the exclusive use if you can. At that age, those are the best parties. Other tip: set an RSVP deadline on the invitation so you have a green light to chase late responders.

We invited everyone at that age (and for the next few years). It's just easier than picking a few. All whole class party invites in our nursery/school are done on Whatsapp, which works well for having an easy way to scroll back for info and rsvps. I allow siblings as well as I know sorting childcare can be a pain otherwise.

We end up with loads of presents and we just deal with it. Nobody ever says not to bring a gift, it would come across as weird in our circle. There are charity shops if you really don't want to keep them or you just pass them on. We just kept them and they all got used.

I do party bags for everyone including siblings and spares.

They don’t need to be tat-
Mini colouring, bubbles, you can get small play doh pots that come wrapped with a cutter (did that when DS was 4), balloon, small book like a mr men one, sweets obviously.
Even the pure tat I love because I save it to pull out for restaurants. The only thing no one ever wants is a bouncy ball 🤣

In nursery, reception and year 1 we’ve done full year invites - but that’s only 32 kids.

for party bags, things that have gone down well are the “where’s the poo?” books, Mr Men books and sweetie cones!

I’d also suggest covering the cost of the teas/coffees for the adults if you can. Not a huge deal, but a nice touch

for the invitations, I use Zazzle to mock up an invite, screenshot it and send it on the year WhatsApp group. Don’t forget to put an RSVP date on and ask for dietary requirements

Also bear in mind that invites for 1 at this stage often finish up with 4 (2 adults and sibling) - ask me how I know.

In reply to you & @MsSquiz we don’t have a WhatsApp for the Nursery School. Who would have coordinated those?

That would be way easier…. Hence having to get in touch with the parents via paper then chase invites. Party is in two weeks.

We can get notice out asap and see what the response is.

It’s January and neither of the twins have been invited to a party (since Sept) so I’m not going to sweat it. Folks are so welcome 🙏 but if it’s not pitch perfect 👌 I’ll have to be forgiven.

Ours are organised by a class rep/PTA volunteer (usually a parent who already had an older child at the school) all parents can be added.
it’s so handy for reminders about non uniform day, special occasions, etc as well as party invites.
we also have various offshoots of the groups.

it could be worth mentioning it to the class teacher?

It’s a one year only at a nursery school. I’d say we will likely have something like that at primary.

We have the SeeSaw app that the school use to communicate with us re those things.

I’ll keep it in mind for next year.

We also had this at DD2’s nursery. The staff set it up so they could share photos, updates, etc and parents could pop messages on about missing items.

for school we have tapestry for early years and dojo for older kids, but the WhatsApp group (while I know is an annoyance for many parents) can be really handy.
for example, on the run up to Christmas we had a pinned message with the dates for Christmas performances, Christmas party and if anything was needed on those days. And again, they’re also used to send a quick message when a kid comes home without their coat.

We had one at nursery set up by parents. I think two of us each knew someone else and we expanded it from there. Finally gave pieces of paper to nursery to hand out for the last few we didn’t know (optional of course). It was very quiet compared to school chat, but very handy for organising playdates, random impromptu playground visits at weekends and invaluable for lost property and party invitations.