I've got 13 children for a birthday tea on Friday and I need inspiration from MN

[sandyballs]

Most of them are 4/5 year olds, with a couple of 3 year olds. I need ideas for food and ways of entertaining them. Thought I'd do a pass the parcel, what else would this age group like?

If I do musical statues, is it just the winner that gets a prize? I'm a novice at this, can you tell? I normally pay for other people to do parties.

I was going to get them all sat at the table and do something creative - thought of buying plain gingerbread men and then getting icing pens to decorate them, but would this be madly messy and chaotic?

Will follow this with interest - I'm doing the same in April for my ds's 4th birthday party.

I was planning on a picnic style tea (IE on the floor!), pass the parcel, pin the mask on batman and wrap up mummy in loo roll!

A tip for pass the parcel - put a small present (stickers, small packet of sweets etc) under each layer so whoever takes the layer off gets a prize - saves so many tears at the end when there is only one winner.

There's also musical bumps, musical chairs, dead lions, pin the tail on the donkey etc. Be aware though that games with prizes can cause problems with the ones that don't win. Non- competitive crafty things are good but will probably be messy so its up to you. At dd's 7th birthday the craft activity was by far the most successful of the party. As for food we usually do sarnies, sausages, crisps, cherry toms, biscuits and cakes.

Food=all the rubbish you never normally feed your children.

Games=I made up a few silly ones when ds1 had his party at home but the favourite by far was to give each child a sticker with their name on then each child stands on at a certain spot and they let a ballon go. Of course the screeching ballon going beserk all over the room had them all in stitches. When it lands that child puts his sticker where it stopped. The winner is the one with their sticker furthest from the start spot.

I also did a lucky dip whre each child had to oick a number and that number corresponded with a prize. All differnt prizes, nothing over about £1.50 though, they loved that!

Thanks, any more?

I always find that they eat far less than you expect ..so easy things like breadsticks, grapes and cubes of cheese always go down well... do you have a garden for them to let off steam in? (Hopefully won't be too snowy) A garden mini egg /sweet hunt is often fun.