Sooooooooooo I invited 26 four year olds to dd2's party, fully expecting to have at least 5 cancellations...

[emkana]

... and of course they are now all bl*dy coming! So including the dd's that will be 28 children! What do I do with them? I haven't got an entertainer.

What I have is

a church hall with some trikes, scooters, a roundabout thingy and a big slide in it

some paper crowns to decorate

a rubbish stereo to play music on

What can I do to keep them going? I find musical statues never really works that well, or does it? What else can I play other than pass the parcel?

HELP (It's fancy dress btw)

Deffo re bouncy castle. DD is 4 in 2 weeks time and a bouncy castle will be the feature of her party (plus the cheap as chips wallpaper drawing!)

Bouncy castle round our way is quarter of the price of an entertainer and lasts a lot longer!

Don't you find though that they are forever getting hurt/bumped on a bouncy castle?

I'm thinking

parachute games
pass the parcel
musical bumps
some general dancing
plus party crowns/wallpaper drawing/biscuit decorating

plus 30 mins for party tea

sorted? (plus they have the trikes/scooters/slide)

Or am mad?

No. ALL children love bouncy castles. The plus is that at that age lots of parents want/have to stay. They feel a bit embarassed/"spare" to do so. Asking them to supervise the bouncy castle is really easy - they like to be occupied and you genuinely appreciate them doing this.

We haven't had any incidents in 3 year of doing it.

Bouncy castle plus wallpaper drawing = good party!

What do you think of my plans though? Recipe for disaster, or doable?

(Really want to keep the cost down)

Wallpaper drawing = virtually free

Dead Lions is my favourite game, esp for the last 10 mins to calm them down!

I had 30 at DD's 5th party last year.

Craft is good - also provide colouring sheets off t'internet (there is a great site I have bookmarked, but at work, where I am not, helpfully - google children's colouring pages) as lots of kids (girls and boys) just spend the whole party doing that quite happily. Provide stickers and other bits too.

We did a cool game for DS2's 4th birthday party (on a pirate theme) with a treasure map where they each had to pick a square and the winner, announced at end, was revealed in a secret envelope. I told a story about how a pirate came to my door with the map etc. They were all well up for it and it was the only game everyone played.

Flap a fish in teams surprisingly successful.

Also mini obstacle course in teams (you need to pick them).

pin the tail on etc not good with so many.

Try 2 parcels for pass the parcel.

Wrap a mummy in cheap loo roll hilarious.

All these a lot cheaper the b castle (good tho they are)

I do find 4yos play games btw, there were 20 at DS2's 4th in April and some were only 3.5 but most played lots of the games.

why on earth did you invite so many children?
that is A LOT

thanks hana, that's really helpful

As I said, I expected cancellations, which didn't come.

Clary, thank you, great ideas there.

Games went down well at dd's 4th birthday. We also did a balloon drop and they went mental and they also went mental for the bubble machine.

I got some friends to come in fancy dress and help.

What is a balloon drop?

yikes . We had 18 6 yr olds and that was chaos. Can you run to a bouncy castle although you'd need to limit numbers on at once and have adults police the behaviour. Something crafty but keep it simple, crowns, masks and maybe playdough for them to just fiddle with.
Games :-
Musical chairs/mats.
Sleeping lions.
What's the time Mr Wolf.
Duck, duck, goose.
Team games like an egg and spoon relay, simple obstacle course or passing a cotton reel attached to string over and under a line of kids

Bubble machine with disco lights for after tea ?

If it gets too much remember the time we had 60 (stupidly decided to combine ds1's 6th with ds2's 5th)

You know at New Year when there's a huge net of balloons on the ceiling and they net gets let down so all the balloons come floating down?

In our local Poundland they do balloon bags, just plastic bags with a piece of string. You can get about 100 balloons in there. When you pull the string the bag tears and out come all the balloons.

on table, hand out a4 paper and markers, tell them to write name if poss and draw a placemat for their tea (we did a pizza beacue that's what we were doing, making pizza). between main and cake, have them hand in placemat, and have one kid draw one out of a bag (NOT a judgement by you!) for a little prize.

worked for us