Please tell me it's possible to organise a 4 year old's party for less than ?150 !!!!!!!!!!

[halcat]

My DD is 4 in January and from what I've found out so far it seems that hiring a soft play place or a hall plus entertainer would rack up as much as ?150 before I've even blown up a balloon. So I'm pretty keen to just do it myself but don't know where to start.
Does anyone have an brilliant ideas for activities/games that would keep 15 4 year olds quiet for an hour or so before the cake and sarnies come out?
Please help or I may have to force my DH into a clown costume for the afternoon ( and I'm not sure my marriage would survive it...)

I would hire a hall somewhere and do the games and catering yourself. Games such as pass the parcel and musical statues.

Have it aT home.....is sooo easy!
plus mums wioll think you are fab!

Aged 4 will be pleased with traditional games, pass parcel musical statues etc.

Treasure hunt, colouring competition, dercorating biscuits.

I would also cull the numbers just a little

you don't want 15 4 year olds in your house

can you hire a church hall
local school hall?

here we have a secondary school that hires out its gym plus bouncy castle plus soft ball toys for £60 .. then you just bring food and lay it out in their board room

church hall for DS's 3rd cost me £25 .. they had a kitchen and I borrowed the playgroups big toys

OK, how about:

Mask decorating
T-shirt painting

as crafty activities - there is a super website for bulk crafty things with children, Baker Ross I think it is.

Other games that work well for this age are:

Pass the Parcel
Musical chairs
Sleeping Lions
Squeak Piggy Squeak
Pin the tail on the whatever (animal of choice)

Definately halve the numbers and have it at home. Off out now but will pop back later with ideas.

do a craft activity with them as they arrive - making party hats maybe, then play games - pass the parcel / pin the tail on the donkey etc, then eat, then home.

Our church hall, with a marvellous large kitchen was £40. Enough room to lay out party stuff, do t shirt painting and games.

Friend of mine did a pass the parcel with a clue in the last parcel to start a treasure hunt off (was v impresive). You'll have to spend a bit of time doing the clues but it kept a house full of kids happy for ages.

if you have a large(ish) room then fine do it at home, but bewarned 4 yo girls will want to nose in all your rooms Maybe think about hiring a hall, our church has rooms to hire out at a very cheap cost.

Dont worry about the noise, parties arent for peace and quiet. Lots of pop music, games: Musical statues, musical bumps, keep the balloon off the floor, pass the parcel, duck duck goose,Simon says (make is the sillier the better, pin the tail on the donkey, Disco dancing, pinata (these are great and are so tough they take ages to do, kids all line up and have a go at bashing it Did one for DS (aged 5 and it took 20mins to bash, the kids loved it.)

Have also done decorate a cake or biscuit. If at home and dont mind kids going everywhre, place dried beans(or squares of paper) all over house send kids off in groups to see who collects the most.

for a 4 Yo I would say 1.5 hours is plenty long enough, if you run out of games/energy gets kids to sit down and watch your DD open her pressies, (I know this sounds bad but the kids at my DD 5th party loved seeing what everyone else gave, and it passes the time too!)

HTH

Brilliant, thanks for those, some great ideas already, esp love the treasure hunt idea and the hat decorating.

I can't have it at home unfortunately, not enough room, and I know 15 is quite a lot but you know what it's like, she's just started at the school nursery, not there long enough to make specific friends so can't see round inviting the whole class (though of course they prob won't all come). Anyone got tips on what the average drop out rate is??!!

Will def look in to hiring the school hall though, what a great idea.

Loaads more great ideas appeared while I was posting the last message so thanks too. Am really tickled at the thought of sending kids off to find dried beans, bet it worked a treat.

I would say though even though you can get a cheaper venue that I've never managed to do a party for less than £150 once you count in the food, cake, party bags (which I try to stick to around £1 each for), decorations (re-use or make our own), games (and little prizes) etc ..

The beans worked well, another mum poached the idea but tried to make it more exciting by using smarties, spent morning speading them around everywhere, went to pick DC up from school and DH ate them all LOL

We had 15 (mostly boys) at a party last weekend and 2 didnt show up and it was surprisingly fine.

LOL Busy

Twig, I take your point, it does really add up... but at least if I run it myself then I'm not paying for the entertainer. And the soft play place near me seems to be £15 a head which is just bonkers, and that's before tea/party bags too.

Party bags for £1? what's your secret?!

Well last year I held a 5yr olds birthday party for 10 children for £25 - including cake and food.

I made the cake myself (just a simple sponge with colourful icing). Had homemade cakes and biscuits, jelly icecream, etc etc. We played stick on the nose on the clown (pin the tail on the donkey basically LOL), pass the parcel, musical bumps, and the rest of the time was spent running round entertaining themselves.

Queen, you are clearly the party queen. Any chance I could hire you??!!

QueenOfQuotes - did you really honestly truly stick to £25??
That is pretty impressive at £2.50 a head. Did it incl. party bags?
My downfall is always the hidden extras. I start off feeling good about it all, we have hired a spft play for £20 for an hours play followed by half an hour in a function room - bring all food etc yourself (and the softplay is not excl. use as this makes it much more expensive)
£20 hire
£1 for invites - homemade but I bought a pack of scooby doo stickers
c. £5 for the cake. Homemade but bought fresh candles, food colouring for icing, icing sugar, half box of free range eggs etc - all adds up
£1 for napkins
£3 for disposable plates, napkins
£32 shopping bill for bread, butter, ham, cheese, toms, carrots, 2 packs choc fingers, 30 small fruit juice cartons (2 each), 2 bottles fizzy flavoured water for mums, crisps, party rings, few nibbles for mums (norm round here to cater a little bit for parents)
£28 on party bags, incl bags, 2 choc mini treat size, ring, bracelet/parachute man, tooter, yo yo, notepad and glittery pencil
£5 Pass the parcel prize x 2 (used newspaper for wrapping)

think that adds up to £90 - despite doing all catering from Asda, hiring no clowns, going for homemade cakes, cheap pass the parcel pressie, cheapest hire in the area!

Once factored in a new outfit for DD, a present, card, wrapping paper, a pressie and card for DD1 to give her, another party tea with grandparents come over....

I reckon £150 is about what I spend when I do one on the cheap! Have spent a lot more in the past on DD1 with bigger hall hire costs, entertainer, more expensive party bags and posher nosh!
I reckon we spend over £1k a year in parties and presents for other childrens parties.

Lemon, where is your £20 soft play place? Round here it is loads more than that, exclusive or not.

I honestly and truely stuck to £25 - it was my parents 'birthday gift' to DS1 and I had instructions to spend it "how I saw best". We (quite literally) had no other money to put towards a party so that was what was used.

I held it at home, went to poundland (and similar shops) to buy cheap party bags and 'party' stuff (hats, hooters, masks etc etc) and we already had some balloons in. Each child went home with a party bag contain a hooter, balloon, masks and piece of cake - and there were no complaints - one of the boys that came is best friends with DS1 now - and has been since the start of Reception (when the party was). I blew loads of cheap balloons up and put them round the house to 'decorate'.

The "pin the nose on the clown" was less that a £1 in Wilkinsons, present in the parcel was a cheap book. I bought a big bag of sweets from the £1 shop for 'prizes' for the other games.

Most of the baking ingredients I already had in, but even those I did have to buy were cheap (flour, eggs, sugar). The bread for the sandwiches was from the breadmaker, the fairycakes were a hit - as I put sickly lurid "alien" green icing on them LOL. The weather was decent - so I openeed the back door so they could go out and play - and tbh they all spent most of the time chasing each other around as 5yr olds like to do!

mind you - have to confess that this year we 'cheated' and payed a total of £97 (including party bags and cake) to go to a new Soft Play place that's opened near us before the summer holidays.

My excuse was that we'd been away in Zimbabwe for 2 weeks at the end of August - and I simply didn't have enough time to organise a 6yr old's party at home when his birthday is the 16th September .

I'm doing a donation to the miniature railway so ds and his little friends can do all you can ride on the trains, and sending dh to McDonalds to buy happy meals (very healthy here with apple piece instead of chips and a fancy bottle of water).

He will have just started kindy - but he's only inviting friends he already has. The whole thing should be under $100 (around 30 quid).

Our local sports centres do hire of the sports hall, use of their bouncy castle and other equipment, two staff to supervise and organise games, and use of a seperate room for food for £60-£65 depending upon which venue. And even well stocked party bags can be done for less than 50p each - our last ones were about 45p each .
So for twenty kids, even with buying a cake rather than making it, we did the whole party for well under £100 all in.

for my ds's 4th, our local toy library hired out a 'party pack' for £15. It included soft play foam shapes, pop up tunnel, tent, rockers etc, inflatables and a ball pool with balls. £30 for the hire of the hall with kitchen, and all the mums were asked to bring a trike/bike or sharable toy (like garage and cars). It was fab.

my dd is 4 next week and we are having her bday party in ... msdonalds! they ahve a play area, provide entertainemtn for 1.5 hrs inc, face painting. feed 'em and goody bags . 15 kids 4.99 each, no mess and a cake thrown in for an extra £5!

dd doesnt have mcdonalds very often (like about 3 times ever!) but all kids love mcd's! - so who cares what the mums think... or the mumnetters!

Our local sports hall is about £130 to hire the "toddler gym" area plus a room for food afterwards. And it's not in a posh area either (though it is London). Grrrrrr. if it was £60 odd for a sports hall and a bouncy castle I'd do it like a shot.

Thanks for link re party bags tho

FMF that sounds great, I don;t know if we have a toy library near here but willlook into it.