DS's 8th Birthday. 4 friends, v.small house, lack of money. Help!!

[DiaDeLosMuertos]

DS's birthday in a couple of weeks, on a Friday. He wants to invite 4 friends (2 boys, 2 girls) from school. Our house is tiny so more than that not really an option. We don't want to do a proper full on party, but we want them all to have fun and for it not to be too hectic. Have very little cash spare to spend on it. Any suggestions would be very welcome! Have thought maybe an age appropriate, reasonably complicated treasure hunt with good quality prizes? Easier said than done though! DS has also mentioned that he'd like a Lego theme... Would it be reasonable to just get all his lego out for them to play with?

I think that children tend to enjoy doing things that they aren't allowed to do at home eg building a den in the living room, where you move the furniture.

A treasure hunt/quizz with dares. Look online for questions.

My niece loved having having a 'silly string' fight in the garden. We bought the cans from the pound shop.

Ice cream factory - paper ice cream bowls, a couple of tubs of ice cream, plus sweets to decorate.

Inside all pizzas for dinner where they can choose their own toppings.

A mocktail station - plastic cups, umbrellas and a choice of fruit drinks.

Great ideas. Can u take them to a park and do treasure hunt there. Make it tough like u said but quality of prizes unimportant. Home for pizza and ince cream factory. Put a movie on and put all lego out. Sounds fab. Will be long so other parents will love you.

Great ideas from chanie. At my DS's party, the treasure hunt was by far the most popular thing and the prize was a tube of smarties each which they were all v pleased with. Then they just wanted to play with the Lego :o

Building on Chanie44 idea - Make their own pizza for tea. Can buy the bases and all the toppings very cheaply.

Has he got a best friend amongst them? Could have them sleepover as an extra treat.

You could do some lego challenges, get them to build something and then give prizes of a sweet to eg- tallest tower without falling over, most colourful, etc so that everyone wins something.

You could also do a challenge a bit like reverse jenga - they take it in turns to put a 4x2 block onto a tower of lego but can only use one hand. The person who put the one before the one which topples the tower is the winner. You might want your ds to experiment with the best number to have as the base of the tower.

Try googling lego parties for more ideas.

Just had another thought:

You could turn the treasure hunt into a 'crystal maze' type event where they have to work as a team to win a joint prize like a tub of sweets.

Buy some cheap matching tshirts from somewhere like primark and set them tasks, some of which use the Lego eg

They have to build a Lego tower in 5 minutes.

Hide Lego in balloons and they have to pop the Lego without using their hands.

A quizz where they win a piece of Lego when they get the questions right.

Pieces of Lego in a bucket of jelly and they have to use their mouths (maybe substitute the Lego for something else!!!!).

A charades type game which is timed.

You can look online for quizz questions and charade topics. Balloons and jelly from the poundshop.

An I'm a celebrity type game where they are blindfolded individually and have to guess what they are eating. So they have 3 foods each and they have a minimum team score.

Foods like lime, marmite etc could work well.

starting to think that maybe I would like an invite....

Another good lego game. Should work well with this age child and small group.

In advance
Sort two sets of identical lego. You don't need loads - say, 20 pieces.
Build one set into an object/sculpture (can be abstract).

At the party
Sit two children back to back - no peeking. The others watch (and laugh!) No helping.
Child 1 is given the completed model.
Child 2 is given the unassembled set of bricks.
Child 1 explains to Child 2 how to make the model.
When the explanation is finished, they compare the two models (and laugh).

At that age my boys loved code cracking. We would often do a treasure hunt: the key to the location of the next clue was in (simple) code.

You could have two separate hunts that they could do in pairs, or make it a race.

These ideas are brilliant! Thanks so much everyone. chanie44 - are you a professional party organiser by any chance? You're an ideas powerhouse! Right, feeling much more positive about this now. Winter birthdays are so tricky. I would love to take them all to the park for a treasure hunt but by the time schools over the light is already going and the weather is likely to be awful anyway... Last year he invited 3 friends back after school and they were a bit of a nightmare tbh. Basically ran riot! I was exhausted by the end of it and DS didn't have a great time. This time he wants different friends but I've still been dreading it. But now it seems completely managable with a bit of planning. Thanks again!

You could do a modelling, 3D version of Pictionary with lego.
Did a treasure hunt at one party, which was a great success, as was bingo (Skylanders themed in our case).