If you have a boy between eight and ten, what kind of parties are you throwing and going to atm please?

[ColdComfortFarm]

My son turns nine quite soon, and he desperately wants to celebrate his birthday with some kind of party, but I don't know what the 'right' kind of party is these days. I have always had whole class parties, usually at home, usually with an entertainer of some kind, but suspect this might now be seen as naff or babyish? A bit of background, my son is mildly autistic/Aspergers so is a bit eccentric, a bit away with the fairies sometimes, slighly young for his years, and doesn't do football/sports. His teachers tell me he is popular with his classmates, but sadly, he never gets invited to any birthdays any more, even the bigger events thrown his particular friends, which is upsetting (especially when he sees the other kids trooping off together, or invitations being passed around in school or the playground), but also means I don't know what other parents are doing. ie how many kids you tend to invite and what you do. So I'd really appreciate any suggestions and ideas. I'd like him to have a cool sort of celebration that he enjoys and that other children will want to come to. He likes the company of girls and boys, loves food, films, magic, animals,lots of different stuff. Happy to throw a bit of money at the problem.

Wow - you are all so creative! Love the Beano party bags idea. What did you put in them?

Cold Comfort - if you live near Sheffield I would willingly come and do it all over again - I loved it!!

ideas for Beano party though

don't eat Gnasher's poo - buy minstrels/maltesers/choc buttons (ie brown sweets)

put a few on a plate - say 10, send one child out of the room

all rest of kids decide which one is the poo

child comes back in, points to a sweet, if it is not the poo s/he can eat it, and try again, if they point to the poo their turn stops and someone else has a go. Silly game, not a lot of point to it, but great fun!

Panda, can you come and do a party for my DS? I don't think I have the social skills to do it myself! :o

Sheffield a bit of a hike I'm sad to say! I have to go out for a bit now, but will def come back and read this thread. Am feeling more positive now.

I'll be watching eagerly for any science party info too, my ds is bonkers about science and dh has a physics degree, so I think we might do it ourselves!

\link{http://www.kids-partycabin.com/mad_scientist.html\some ideas here}

I like the rocket launch one, you could glue on coloured card etc to make the film canisters look like rockets

There's quite a few "magic trick" science entertainments - I can contribute the "bowl of water and the burglar" one, for starters. Then there is mintoes in the cola bottle,....etc.

There is a book called 'Einstein's science parties'i got on Amazon which has loads of experiments that i used when DS had a science party.
DS was 9 this year he had a mountain boarding party, he only went to a couple of parties, one at the cinema and another to see a play.

Hmm. Science experiments what can I remember? If you put a shout out for Katz on here - or I can FB her, she has a booklet she produced of lots of experiments for her DD's party, that we adapted...I just haven't got access to it on this machine but DH may still have it when he gets home later. Ask me if you want me to ask DH, or contact KAtz.

we did:

red cabbage indicator solution - whizz up red cabbage and water in liquidised, and sieve. use small amounts of solution to test ph of household ingredients. we used clear plastic cups and plastic spoons to mix with, and such things as vinegar, lemon juice, bicarb, sugar, dishwasher tab etc etc, and got the kids to predict what would happen.

slime - is a mix of water, pva glue and borax, and food colour for colourings - google for exact recipe. I borrowed bowls from a couple of DS's friends to have enough for one each, I had dilute PVA and borax solutions made up in advance, and they mixed them together with food colouring, is amazing how slime is made. I bought cheap small pots with lids to take it home in - was main content of the party bag.

getting iron filings from cereal - pulp up a fortified cereal with water to a thinnish mix - I found Rice crispies worked the best - yes I did experiment with lots before the day

put in clear plastic cup, hold very strong magnet to outside of cup, and stir for a while. Iron filings do collect inside cup next to magnet after a while.

fizzing eyeballs-

make up bath bomb mix - description here (I used water not witch hazel and no colour/smell) and press into oval or round ice cube trays. leave to harden then push out (rubber ice cube trays best) decorate with felt pens to look like eyeballs, then drop in the bath!

Lava lamps - glass jar with lid - 1 per child. Just under half fill with oil, top up with water with food colour added. drop in bits of alka seltzer, watch lava lamp effect. Can just shake and watch effect as oil and water separates once alka seltzer run out

exploding coke - you need a large area outside

bottle of coke, tube of mentos. make a tube to fit in neck of coke bottle, make small hole in side of tube and put teaspoon handle or similar through to block the neck of the bottle. take mentos out of packet, pour into card tube. Pull out teaspoon allowing mints to fall into coke bottle. Leg it down the garden as coke fountains out. see videos and explanation here or you can buy a gadget off this page to drop the mentos into the tube. all this website has lots of fun ideas

we did the coke as the finale

wow panda

that is SO useful

Happy to help, and as I said, I pinched most of it from Katz . We gave the children the lava lamp, eyeballs, pot of slime and extra strong magnet as the contents of their party bag, along with bar of choc (could use a tube of mentos each!) and piece of cake. We adapted Katz's booklet (see above post) which had explanations of how to do most of the experiments, as well as some background on the science behind the fun, and printed one out for each child.

I made the cake in the shape of a (2d) conical flask. I covered it in sugarpaste, and painted on in food colouring measurement up the side to the age DS was that birthday, and liquid in the flask, bubbles in neck of flask with letters spelling out his name. Put candles at neck of bottle, so smoke looked like steam coming out of flask

DH and I wore lab coats, and we printed name labels for each child with a scientific theme - Radioactive Rob, Bionic Ben type thing - and printed extra to name their pots of slime etc.

I think I can help.....
I have just started a company called C.S.I Kids, crime scene investigation parties for 7-14 yr olds. Great for indoors and it will occupy them (even the naughty ones) and they may even learn something!
I'm in Bristol but prepared to travel up to an hour.
Have a look at the website and please help spread the word. www.csikids.co.uk

ds1 turned 8 last fri and we had a party at home - 8 boys, played musical puddles (got off MN, musical chairs but with puddle shapes cut from newspaper), had a Wii Mario Kart tournament (would normally have outside games but the weather was foul), did pass-the-parcel with forfeits to do before you unwrapped, had tea then had a treasure hunt.

It wasn't at all cool, and every boy there appeared to have a fab time. The treasure hunt went down extremely well.

and having read this thread he is having a science party for his 9th!

I've heard about a lady that can be be hired to do Lego parties in London. Has anyone ever heard of her and do you have a contact? Thx

Ds is having an Angry Birds party...

LOVE the idea of a Beano party and have 'banked' the idea for future!

About.com has lots of mad science experiments ranged by school stage.
I got a load of ideas for school holiday activities from experiments in Edinburgh's science festival too.
How about making the tallest tower using marshmallows and raw spaghetti?
Making a 2 foot bridge between two chairs using only 50 sheets of A4 paper?
Extracting DNA from kiwi fruit?
Usborne's 50 science things to make and do is brilliant. I nicked some of their ideas, some others I just thought "I wonder if that could be done? Or done better?"
I had all the kids friends round one day and challenged them to drop a raw egg from the upstairs window without breaking it. That kept 7 kids aged 6 to 13 (and a mum who was having too much fun to leave) amused for 3 hours!