Am I completely insane if I let ds invite his whole class to his 6th birthday party?

[aloha]

There are 26 of the little blighters, and ds wants to ask them all. I also want to invite maybe three other children, plus of course dd will be there.
The party is at our house - we have a reasonably big sitting room and a smallish London garden (not that wide, about 40ft long). I am having a magician to perform for an hour and don't plan on the party being longer than about two hours. So it would be

Play in garden with buffet (do you play games at a 6th b/day party? If so, which?)
In for show
Back out into garden for possible Pinata bashing and chocolate rice crispy cakes etc while dh sweeps up remains of entertainer.
Cutting of cake, merry chorus of Happy Birthday
Push party bag into sticky ungrateful hands
Slam door
Drink wine

Is this doable or will I end up having a nice long rest while wearing a tight fitting white jacket?

Bit of background, ds has Aspergers, so it's nice if he invites people so he gets a better chance of being invited back through the year. He also says he doesn't know who his best friends are, and just wants everyone there. I don't suppose everyone will come..

I sort of envisaged 10-15 children.

games

corners

musical stuff

parcel wiht tow parcles in each circle

I did just that for DSs 5th birthday. Was absolutely lovely. Whole class is a must. They all squashed up and watched the magician with wonderment. Will be lovely. Have a time limit though. And remove the white furniture.

Corners is brill (doesn't last long enough though)

They do love musical bumps but hate being out - I always used to let them carry on playing but I still had enough brain cells then to remember who was already out.

www.eventwise.co.uk/asp/PartyAnimals.asp

Look, I am paralysed with indecision - please help me out. 3pm or 3.30pm??? I am inclined toward 3pm with 5pm pick up with offer of wine for parents.

White sofa has washable covers and spare set!

i'd throw them straight to the magician if possible. we do alot of parties and find they can wander around and get over excited and not settle if they don't have something to do straight away.

hell yeh you have to invite the whole class, for my ds 3rd birthday party i had the whole nursery class at my home and got a entertainer for 4 hours, played games in the garden with the garden toys too, it went so fast and they all had a briliant time. for ds 5th party he had moved to a new school not long before so i ended up inviting all his class from his previous and present classes!! was brilliant, yet again entertainer in a hall though LOL. which had a massive garden with swings slides etc. but was just a 2 hour party but it was brilliant. and now i have 3 children and planning halloween party but im not inviting any whole classes LOL. just a couple of friends for each.
goodluck with the party though!! he will love having the whole class

Yes, 3pm-5pm is fine.

OY ALOHA. Listen. Remove the white thing. Really. Gives more room on the floor for them to sit down and watch the magician.

Thank you Blu. A nice firm voice in the melee

Very welcome melee though!

3- 5pm it is, magician to start at 3.15ish - 4.15ish, followed by tea and pinata and cake and ceremonial removal of hostess to rest home.

White sofa will be placed in window recess.
White chair taken upstairs. Leather chair taken upstairs. Sofa table taken upstairs. Armoire thing left to mercy of rabble in manner of French revolution.
White rug rolled up and petted.

"White sofa will be placed in window recess."

AND COVERED, ALOHA!!!

Oh - ^ doesn't work with caps - how "interesting"

Yes, 3-5pm is perfect.

They will all have gone by 6pm.

Deffo do tea, then have a breather doing something else, then regroup for cake.

Name labels.

Champagne and M&S nibbles for the parents. They will think you are a winning combination of Annabel Karmel, Su Pollard and Nigella Lawson (in a good way!). Expectations are low and no one drinks very much at that time but bugger me is a glass of champagne welcome at party pick up time. You will be revered as the hostest with the mostest, set a fantastic trened and your DS will be invited to all parties (I am not joking - they feel they owe you).

DO NOT DRINK BEFORE THEN. I know its tempting, but that way leads disaster. (Anyway, you've got the whole evening to lie on the sofa drinking and hoovering up sausage rolls and cheese and pineapple on sticks).

Will the magician have a rabbit, Aloha? Rabbits are good.

I was going to suggest the chocolate game - bar of chocolate, throw die in a circle, whoever gets 6 has to put on various clothes and cut up chocolate with knife and fork til next child gets a 6. But have just seen the predominance of white in the house. Perhaps play with white chocolate?

Pass the parcel can have forfeits if you want it to be a bit more "grown up" but remember not all 5-6 year olds can read much.

Hide and seek/sardines is very popular if you can bear to let them rampage through several rooms.

Treasure hunts (for objects or for chocolate buttons).

Sleeping lions is very good if you want a few moments of peace, and they do like it, for some bizarre reason.

There's a good book called Children's Parties published by Ryland, Peters & Small.

Have a simple craft like these hats set up at the begining to occupy the early arrivals - the girls will colour away - the boys will probably just do a quick scrawl of their names but it will reduce the running round like banshees/lonely child not knowing what to do etc and give you a bit of time until the magician starts. 3 is a good party start time.

I feel much, much happier now. Will write invitations tonight with dh. Will buy cheap champagne (will cava do? This is East Dulwich and we are very bohemian, as Twiglett will attest ) but all that can wait a bit.
ds and dd very excited and happy. Ds wants dinosaur plates.

Thank you all!

I did a thread a couple of months back about this brilliant thing my nanny did. She stuck a long length of lining (wall) paper on the wall, put out lots of crayons and let everyone do some drawing in sections. You can take a photo of everyone by their section and let them take their section home. You could also do it on the floor if no available wall (ours was outside).

That would work well for the initial activity and it gives them something to wander to if they get bored. And its quiet and not very messy.

This one went down well at dd's 4th.

We did a treasure hunt. I got pictures of characters like Shrek, Noddy, Bob the Builder, then cut them into 6. Each piece was put in an envelope. Each envelope had a coloured dot on it, each picture was a different colour (eg Noddy pieces were red).

On the day they were in teams, each team were allocated a colour, and they had to run round the hall to find all 6 envelopes in their colour. When they had pieced all the bits together they knew their character and they then had to find something in the hall that related to that character (eg I hid a Bob the Builder Hat and Shrek hands).

We did a balloon drop (100 balloons in a bag) and they went mental. They also went mental over the bubble machine.

DS1 invited his whole class to his 5th birthday party in August, and 22 turned up. We hired a hall with inside and outside space and a magician/entertainer. Not sure I'd do it at home though, but then our house is quite small and you can never guarantee the weather in this country.

The ideas are lovely, and I'm sure will work for dd's birthdays, but ds has Aspergers and dyspraxia so they wouldn't really be Ok for him.

aloha it all sounds great but I think you are running the risk of trying to cram too much into two hours, so just be wary of that. I would definitely do pass the parcel, it can be quite a good one to start with because by this age they generally know what they are doing.

Myy dd is having a party next week and I've been reading this thread for much needed ideas.
Question - what is corners? People have said this is a good game??