Is 3 hours ok for a 6 year old's party?

[nappyaddict]

Animal man is an hour.
Food and candle blowing will probably take 30 mins.
That leaves 1.5 hours for bouncy castle, ball pit, party games.

Or should I make it 2.5 hours?

2.5/ 2 hours is fine, 3 hours is a long time. Animal man, bouncy castle and food (in whatever order you think is best) sounds grand.

DDs 6th birthday party was 3 hours - about an hour for jewellery making person which I felt meant 2 hours would have been too short. Think 2.5 hours would probably have been better than 3 hours tbh. In future would probably do 2 hours unless it was a day trip type party for a smaller number of friends.

We ended up having 4hr birthday for dd1's 7th, but was just 5 of them, had planned for 3hrs, but they were having so much fun and still party games to do, so rang round and extended it!

I guess it depends on how many you have, whether you think they are likely to get bored/ go manic. 25 energetic boys maybe go for shorter party, a dozen well behaved girls and 3hr should be fine.

I think 3 hours is too long

We went to a 3hr party recently - was too long people started leaving after 2-2.5hrs. Though they were only 4 and parents had to stay.

How long will a round of musical bumps, pass the parcel, dancing competition take? There's about 40 children so was thinking of having a few parcels circulating at once.

2.5 hrs max.

Also what's a good game to play with balloons whilst guests are arriving?

I do 1.5hrs! Anything longer and I can't cope with them. But I don't have extras, just party games and food.

Is it The Animal Man (Nick Spellman, I think his name is?) If so, he is fabulous!

Bouncy castle & ball pit etc will be good for when they arrive, as its something they can just join in on as they arrive. IME some people will be almost 1/2 hour late!

Then do the animal man, then food and cake.

Some of them sit for only 10mins for food, so the bouncy castle will again come into its own.

Games always take less time than you think they will, IM(Bitter)E.

No unfortunately not. It's Steffan Pearson. We have also been to parties with someone called Simon Avery and Dale White who was good and a lady called Jill Reynolds.

Pass the parcel with 40 is probably a bit too manic. Have done it with 20-25 and 2-3 parcels with extra layers. I usually reckon max 13 layers per parcel. The logistics of making it 'fair' are tricky. How about a lucky dip type game where each child has a go + wins something, but you don't need music, gaps between children etc.

Agree 3hrs too long with that number. Our 4hr one was more like a special play date so not as intensive. Do you need bouncy castle + animal man + games? I would prob think animal man food and a few games are enough and save bouncy castle for less busy party. Also you can't really have 40 children safely on bouncy castle can you? So what do the others do when it's not their turn on the castle. You can't really have 'big' games like pass the parcel at the same time as the mental confusion on their faces would be too much as they decide between bouncy castle and pass the parcel.

A lot of the kids have SN so the bouncy castle and ball pit is really for the kids who may not be able to sit for long enough to enjoy the games or watch the entire animal show.

With musical bumps do you usually make it last one song or a few songs? The song we were planning on doing it to is 3 minutes and 5 seconds long but that doesn't seem very long?

God, I would cut that number to 20.