Thought other people might be interested to know about a mostly successful party for my 4 year old DD last week. I still feel very new to the whole children's-party thing! Must start thinking about her 5th birthday now...
Timing: 3-5pm - just right
Venue: at home. Much easier than a community hall as everything was right there.
Number of guests: 6, including birthday girl - just right. Mostly under 4 yrs.
Timetable:
3pm - as guests arrived, we gave them a little pizza base, and lots of pots of potential pizza toppings, and they made their own pizzas. They all loved this!
3pm onwards - running around in the garden. Doing a simple obstacle race that DH set up. This didn't work so well because they didn't have the patience to wait whilst the other children ran around, and they didn't really get the concept of an obstacle race.
So this degenerated into just generally running around in the garden, and being chased / roared at by DH. Which was a bit success.
Then, still in the garden, What's the Time Mr Wolf, and Grandmother's Footsteps. Pretty successful, apart from for the youngest guests, who were a bit confused.
3:30pm ish onwards - making spoon people. Wooden spoons from Wilkinson (40p each). Stick on googly eyes. Draw rest of face on spoon. Cut out very simple dress / dungarees / hat shapes from coloured card. Decorate with crayons / stickers. Stick on the spoons. Stick pipecleaners on as the arms.
They all LOVED this. I was surprised at how well this went down.
4:15pm ish - party games. Musical bumps, musical statues, Simon Says, pass the parcel. Good fun.
4:30pm - party tea. Pizzas they had made, hula hoops (everyone loved sticking them on their fingers and eating them off), cucumber sticks. Then jelly and ice-cream with hundreds-and-thousands. Then birthday cake.
Party bags had: One Crayola mini stamper, a polystyrene glider, a 20p Cadburys Fudge bar, some washable smiley face tattoos, and a piece of cake.