party games for 3 yr olds

[redheadmum]

got my 3 yr olds party next week any ideas?

Pass the Parcel
Pin (BlueTak) the tail on the Donkey (or as we had at DS request on the Dinosaur)
Musical Bumps / Statues
Hunt the Teddy
Flapping Fish (fan newspaper fish along the floor)

??

hide and seek (downstairs only)?

The chocolate game was always popular with my 2 dd. Basicly, Children in a circle roll a dice and the first to get a six has to put on hat, scarf and gloves and try to cut and eat large block of chocolate whilst the other children continue to roll the dice. When the next 6 is rolled that child dons the scarf etc and tries to cut and eat choc. Game ends when all the choc has gone. HINT : put a sheet under plate of choc - it can be messy!

Thought of another !

Feed the Dragon (throwing balls or scrunched up paper into a decorated box)

my dd's fave game in the world is What's The Time, Mr Wolf? And she likes musical bumps and musical statues, hide and seek, pass the parcel. And pass the orange (under chins).

If you have a largish clear area you can use, Bean Chase works for 3yos. They all line up at one end of the room, an adult with a big pot of dried butter beans scatters the beans across the floor, and the kids have to retrieve the beans. Sounds naff but it goes down really well with 3 year olds.

Something I did for my dd's 4th birthday was to get a big length of giant bubble wrap (from a garden centre), and all the children jumped up and down on it to make the bubbles pop. It was an absolute riot, and I'm sure it would work just as well with 3 year olds.

HI I did the bubble wrap thing for my DD birthday and it went down really well too. If the weather is nice my why not have a treasure hunt in the garden. my friend did this and the kids still talk about it (that was in April).

DD went to a party where they had an egg and spoon race with Kinder eggs. When the race was over, they all got to eat their egg!

Or matching snap in the garden, hide one half of the snap cards in various places, then give each child the other card and they have to find the matching one, everyone gets a prize at the end of it, so no-one upset! fab if you have a big garden, no so good if you don't

some great ideas - thanks

just need to fill around an hour....actually am becoming increasingly terrified as have 13 pre-schoolers (plus 4 babies) coming to our house

what do you do for prizes? I've got mostly boys coming round...I'm assuming it's not good to just do chocolate!!

Chocolate not good for your carpets either!

Why not pop to Wollies or the corner shop etc and stock up on bubbles, yoyo's, little things like that?

PS Always good to go out on the game sleeping lions!

do you think they follow party games at that age?
I have planned a soft play party for my 3 year old! Kop out!!!
Pass the parcel. circle games etc?

I think that would be fine. If it were me I'd do a couple of simple little games, or have them prepapred and then play it by ear.

Auntymandy, my dd and her friends were very keen on simple party games for their 3rd birthday, and as long as the rules are easy and flexible then yes, they can follow them.

For prizes at that age, I used things like little story books (59p and 99p from Wilkinsons), cheap pencils and pads, little boxes of raisins, packets of gummy sweets and - yes - chocolate (maybe I was lucky but most of the chocolate ended up inside the children, not on the carpet ). We also got some little parachute men from Clinton's Cards for the boys.

We found that at 3, the children weren't hugely competitive, so we just passed the basket of prizes round after every game for the children to take one - most of the time they just enjoyed playing the game, with no concept of winning. We also put a prize in between each layer of Pass the Parcel.

how do you play sleeping lions???

I was going to do games first then food - is that the right way round?? (just thought running around on party food a bad idea)

sleeping liions, greta to calm them down after food and whilst waiting to be collected.

All lie as still as they can . Thats it really!!
Biut thry love it!!

Make t more fun by trying to trick them into moving

"there's a spider on your nose".....