Birthday tea for 4 year old boys-help!

[Butterflygirl7]

Forgive me sounding pathetic-I have no experience of hosting parties for little ones and am sadly stressing rather than looking forward to the process-please help!

We're quite new to our area and DS has had 2 play dates with 2 different friends so far and been to a couple of big parties (Wacky warehouse type things) so his expectations will be quite high I think! However at the moment we just can't afford 100+ quid for that type of party.

He'll be 4 soon and I'd like to at least organise a little tea for him and a few friends (no more than 5 as I don't have space or confidence to host more plus parents!) My questions are a) apart from his 2 good friends, how should i/we decide on who else to invite without offending other children at nursery and b) what can I do to entertain such a small number for say an hour and a half. Does half an hour for eating tea sound right? Would it be ok if they're all boys at the party?

Apologies for such basic questions-hopefully I'll be more on the ball next year!

There was another thread recently on similar lines. FWIW my advice is to:

Have help. One person can't be cutting birthday cake and organising games at the same time.

Half an hour is fine for tea. Have musical cushions etc. first so they wear themselves out, plus What's the time Mr Wolf etc - try googling for party games.

They are quite happy doing Playgroup-type stuff, colouring etc. At that age my DS was most impressed with the Incredible Hulk napkins & plates. Story for wind-down after tea.

Make it 2 hours at the most, and 4 or 5 friends max. How to choose? Pick the Mums you like the most (how very non-PC that Hair is!!)

Thanks tearing hair out. I like non-PC!!

Let them dress as superheroes or somesuch as well. You could also do some simple face paints. Do organised games or acticities before tea then let them run round outside (weather permitting) afterwards. They'll easily spend half an hour doing this if they're in fancy dress, playacting games and stuff before the other parents come. Or do what we used to do and invite the parents to stay so you can have a drink and chat while the kids play. Much better fun for you and them.

activities DER.

Excuse me, I'm on my tea-time wine treat while dh bathes the dds!

We had a birthday lunch at home for ds' 4th birthday earlier this year (it was after the morning nursery class)

We invited 4 or 5 children (2 girls, 3 boys) that we knew he played with/mentioned regularly. All the parents stayed, we had a good chinwag, played about 2 party games! Basically they just ran around and entertained themselves.

Food, toys, a couple of games and a bit of tv at the end and everyone was happy!

(btw, children were aged 3 or 4, with one little sister there too)