Shirley's party advice thread part 2

[stealthsquiggle]

...can I take the liberty of starting another thread, since the other one filled up?

We are just planning for dd1 and dd2 joint party in march, we are looking at around 70 children but planning to hire a disco. We shared with a friend 2 years ago when the age gaps were the same as between my dds this year and it worked really well but mainly because the dj did most of the hard work! Its the thought of party bags, prizes etc for 70 plus I will be around 20 weeks with dc4 then so it will either be wonderful or hideous! There's no way I'd have a full class party for even one child though if I was doing the entertaining!

Wow deafworm that sounds hectic and fantastic all at the same time!

To put it into perspective their last party where we ran the activities last year had a guest list of 15 in total, I'm really not brave enough to do it myself! The dj we use is amazing and really keeps them in check, just keeping fingers crossed he can do it again!

Dd1 wants a castle cake dd2 wants a pirate ship so I've spent the evening looking for ideas, ordered their fancy dress outfits and looked at the party bag stuff on eBay, not massively productive but feel like I've been doing something!

Stealth, that cake is amazing, and exactly what I was after! Way more impressive than the others I've come up with on Google. Is it particularly tricky? I have limited cake experience, but managed a pretty good Thomas cake last year. which took several weeks of practice and about a million eggs

I don't remember it being especially tricky or needing any spceial kit, MrsKitty - in fact, I have just had a quick look at the book and I made it harder for myself by not going with their suggestion of ready-made swiss rolls for the turrets. It is from the same book which I am now carrying into work to get the party bag cake instructions for sits having practically resorted to kicking the bloody printer at home and still not got it to scan. I will post a link to the book as soon as my bloody PC decides to co-operate...

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easy-Party-Cakes-Debbie-Brown/dp/1853918555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326710305&sr=8-1 this]] is the book containing both castle and party bags.

try again

Thanks Stealth. Looked it up and they have it available at the library so have placed a hold . If it's good, I'll probably end up buying it anyway once the spiralling costs of this party have gone away

Hall is booked, need to get back to the bouncy castle man and ask him to change the time (I'd gone for 1-3 before all the advice came in, but then realised how little time that would give me to prep in the morning!)

Next job - invites. Will start googling this afternoon once I'm at work ,

what is the theme of the party, MissK?

Think we're going along with a general theme of Knights & Castles.

DS wasn't that bothered about a theme, and wanted to have the same cake as last year "but Percy, not Thomas". Given that he doesn't show any interest in Thomas anymore I think this was mainly because he didn't realise you can get all sorts of different cakes, so I suggested a castle, which he jumped at as a 'good idea'!

For the party itself I'm considering having a decorate a sword/crown activity table as well as the bouncy castle / pass the parcel / musical statues, but need some advice on whether that will be too much going on, and how to manage all those things going on with potentially 28 children to manage. Also, how do you do it, do you just leave all the kit on a table and let them get on with it, or do they need supervision, and how do you let them know that it's there fore them to do?

Silly questions really, but some advice would be v appreciated - you lot are great!

I have done knights for 20+ 4 and 5yos. I really must focus on my meeting for the moment but will be back later with ideas .

Pass the parcel for 28 children lasts forever. For that number I do two parcels, overwrap by 5 or so - i.e. Two parcels with 18 layers and get any other parents spotting to make it fair (plus few spare sweets just in case).

Doing knights and princesses with toddler activity group this afternoon. Going to do jumping beans style game, where call out person and they pretend to be that - princess, knight, king, dragon, servant, magician, jester. Doing jousting relay race, hobby horses (homemade), foam swords from 99p shop and some hoops to get. Then parachute game of dragons and rangers - dragons have to put eggs in forest (parachute), rangers have to get them off. Followed by sleeping beauty where all sleep under parachute. You could also do prince x says (simon says), what's the time mr dragon.

With a bouncy castle though they will probably just want to bounce, do you know how many allowed on at one time? How about having 4 activities which they rotate on, one of them being bouncy castle, one being crafty stuff, plus one or two more, so not all in one place.

Sorry stealth that you had scanning issues too. Feel terrible that i delegated to you now!!

Mrskitty if you look on our previous thread we had tons of ideas around knights etc. Making shields, swords, decorate crowns. Pass the parcel would be insane at that level of kids so either have smaller groups or multiple parcels. You could also go with a lucky dip type affair so pass a bag/decorated box round that each child takes from.way easier than keeping tabs on layers etc.

Craft activity have as a seperate table to where you eat. Buy paper tablecloths and fold the whole lot inwards and chuck into a bin bag at the end. Decant any sparkly decorations/embellishments into paper bowls along the table. If you cant seat all the kids at once rotate areas but make sure you have multiples of your craft thing in case kids want to do more than one each.

I'd go with long banquet style table with bunting like you have at jousting events etc.

Oh and im not at whole class party dilemmas yet but nooooo way would i be hosting 32 kids. Get ds to select maybe ten.

For DD's party, instead of doing 28 layers of pass the parcel, I did 12 and then had a tub of sweets to give out to the "losers" afterwards. It stopped the game taking forever and everyone still got a prize.

I've been looking on Ebay for a princess outfit for DD. She's been invited to a fancy dress party but because she's so tiny, I need an 18-24 month old sized outfit. I'm not finding anything exciting so far...

Blathers tesco!!!! I went in my big tesco yesterday and they had fairy/rainbow princess style dresses. Dd thought they were for dolls because they started at 9-12 months!!! Im sure their sale is online too at the moment.

Failing that do you have a home bargains. Ive got some dresses which come up small from there.

No home bargains but we do have a enormous Tesco. I'll check there when I'm in later this week.

Just looked online and fairy costumes are for teeny ones but they also have nativity angel for 8 quid. White and gold. Ditch the halo get a tiara and you got one cute princess. Doesnt appear to have wings.Oddly.

loads of knights-related crafts stuff here. We did shields rather than swords to keep the injury count down - we then gave them all inflatable swords after tea and let them go - it was chaos, but so much fun.

Thanks stealth - I looked at Baker Ross yesterday (having seen you mention it in the earlier party thread ) What I'm wondering is, for a lot of their 'decorate your own' stuff it says to use 'Deco Pens' or acrylic paint. WTF is a deco pen, and will bog standard felt tips / crayons / pencils work, or do they have some kind of coating on them that they won't work on?

deco pens are their expensive paint-pens.

For all cardboard things, being paranoid about other people's children in their party clothes, I use mega-washable felt tips - I bought a class pack of the crayola ones from some school supplier or other. Worked fine!

I did buy deco pens for a party of DS's when they were doing china and fabric painting but they were older and there were less of them - those are definitely NOT washable.

Ok, sounds good. Especially since DD (age 2) thinks you can never have too many felt tips - she'll be thrilled to have a tub full to draw all over the walls with do nice colouring with after the party!

I'm thinking either the cardboard swords or the knights masks and maybe some crowns, with felt tips and self adhesive 'jewels'.

I was going to say - stickers (big tubs of foam ones from baker ross or hobbycraft) were the most popular means of decoration - of shiields, and of all other craft things we have done since.

the other big hit for knights was a cardboard play castle which they all decorated

Blimey, with all these fab ideas I might have to do a knights party next year too!

Am wondering if the bouncy castle was an unnecessary extravagance, but DS specifically asked for it (probably because he had one last year!) We shared last years party with a friend but they're at different schools now .