Help needed for games at 7 year olds party. And how do you do a treasure hunt?

[MirandaWest]

DDs 7th birthday party on Saturday. It is at our house for two hours (11 until 1). There will be either 10 or 11 girls. Am feeling woefully underprepared. XH claims he will bring craft items (party has a vague witch theme) to make hats or something. There will be pass the parcel. Also pin the tail on the witch. Or hat or whatever makes sense. What games are there other than musical bumps etc that people will know and will actually play? Fairly small living room for games (kitchen diner for craft). Thunk weather will be cold and possibly wet.

Plus DD is talking about a treasure hunt with two teams. Am useless at things like that - anyone got any suggestions? Am hoping they might play a but although 11 girls might make this less likely.

Am a bit stressed plus need to make cake (DD has high expectations in my abilities - am worried I will not live up to them . Am intending to mainline after party and XH has taken children to his house...

Anyone?

Hello, I have had a witch party for a 7 year old (spooky)

Mine was a craft party and we made cats out of clay.

There are loads of ideas on the Internet if you google Halloween parties and Harry Potter parties. I got a lot of inspiration from pintrest.

Make a batch of fairy cakes or simple biscuits, buy some tubes of writing icing and sprinkles and get them to decorate them - always works a treat.

Buy a v large bar of choc, and dig out an adult or fancy dress hat, scarf and gloves plus a knife and fork. Everyone takes turns to throw a dice, if u throw a 6 you have to put on the hat etc and cut one square of choc with knife and fork in a minute - use a stopwatch! Great fun.
Put different toys in dds' bedroom and the living room - they will divide into small groups and play between games.

Oh and the way I do a treasure hunt is just to get lots of foil wrapped chocolates and hide them in the garden/downstairs area - v easy and everyone loves it!

Thank you both - will get looking for Halloween games and the chocolate one is a very good idea :) And was thinking about icing biscuits too.

Have made the birthday cake which "just" needs icing etc....

I like the idea of just hiding chocolates for treasure hunt - think DD is hoping for "clues" though....

Get a roll of bubble wrap and lay it along the floor. They have to take it in turns to walk along it without popping any bubbles and get a small prize if they succeed.
It's good to get a bit of quiet as the others have to be quiet to listen out for bubbles popping.

Treasure hunt: two teams. The idea is to create a circular hunt with each clue leading to a location in the house, at which is hidden the next clue.

You can make it as difficult/cryptic as you like.

For example, 'a channel changing gadget for the lazy' (the tv remote) and then, hidden in/on/under the remote is the next clue, which reads 'have an enlighteningmoment in the bathroom!' and the next clue is attached to the light switch in the bathroom... Etc.

Suppose you have ten clues in ten locations, in a circular route (so that last clue leads to the first location). Each team is given their first clue, and the each start at a different place in the circular route.

They must leave the clue where the find it, so that the other team can find it too.

When I did this, I also wrote a letter on the back of each clue, so at the end of the hunt they were left with an (easy) party themed anagram. The first team to come to me with the anagram solves (thus proving they had found all the clues) wins!

Re: starting at different locations, one team start at clue five and one start at clue one. So, they are not all trying to find the same clue at the same time.

They must hide the clue back where they found it.

Does that make sense?,!

That does make sense thank you :)

A really easy treasure hunt:

Get some card (index cards are good, but you can cut up bigger pieces), and a copy of the Argos catalogue.

Cut out pictured of things that are in your house and garden (they don't have to be exact matches). About 10 things.

Stick them in the cards.

Hide them around the house in sequence, and keep one card to give to the team to start them. So say there is a picture of a bed, then under the bed a picture of a washing machine, then in the washing machine a picture of a fork, then in the cutlery drawer... And so on.

If you use two different colours of card you can set two trails, with either two treasures or one (a bit harsh!) make the treasures something sharable like a box of fererro rocher.

We did this for my DD's 8th birthday. All the oldies, pass the parcel etc. I bought some cheap kits to decorate hair clips. I also bought white shrinkies, I rubber stamped their names on them and they decorated them. You could do their names in swirly letters if you don't have stamps. We put them in the oven and they shrink and go hard, so they had a nice name plaque or key ring to take home.

Just as an extra, I bought a cheap bingo game in case we ran out of things to do, and they loved it. Lots of games, lots of little prizes and twists to the game, such as the person who is last to get a number is the winner.

Thank you everyone - am about to go out and get large bar of chocolate, Argos catalogue and some card. And more random things I imagine

You can cut some of the pictures into strips, or obscure part of them to make them harder to "solve"

Do the chocolate game that's already been suggested. We did it at DS1's birthday and the 12 boys were so into it - very competitive and hilarious.

I had 15 7 year old to our house last summer for DS2s party. We had planned to do all the easy games, i.e musical bumps, statues, etc.etcd. But in the end they just ran wild in the garden for two hours and so we never bothered with the games. One of them said it was the best party they had been to...but then we do have a very big woodsy garden.

I have done the cake (looks like a 7 year old's drawing but as I was going from DD's impression of how she wanted it to look this is not surprising - plus my art level is that of a 7 year old I think )

Have printed out some bingo cards, am about to wrap pass the parcel and work out the treasure hunt(s). Have got the chocolate for the chocolate game and vaguely know where scarf, hat and gloves are...

DD has drawn the witch for pin the tail on the witch (actually hat). Party not until 11am so hopefully will manage to do what I need to in the morning.....feel tonight will be quite a late one though.

Party happened :) Everyone still alive :) Treasure hunt was v good I thought.

Thank you for all the suggestions which really helped me :)