4 yo party ideas

[Worriedmumofone1]

Hi

Throwing a bday party for my 4 yo in a few months time. So far we’ve got a bubble house and small bouncy castle rented for a hall with lots of space.

I need some help with entertainment ideas…so far I’ve thought of tables so kids can colour. I considered hiring a bubble machine and putting it in the other corner of the room with some towels as I’m worried about ruining the bouncy castle, or am I overthinking it?

Also musical chairs or is that too much for a bunch of 3/4 year olds?

Ideas please!! Thanks in advance

Pass the parcel always goes down well

I wouldn't bother with the colouring. Honestly at this age what you have planned is perfect. Bubbles and bouncy castle is all they need with some music. They're just going to run round hyper and mad anyway so keep expectations low.
Pass the parcel and musical statues always good as pp said.

Balloons are always popular. I find the organised activities cause more drama than they are worth. Bouncy castle and balloons for those who want to run about, colouring/craft station for the kids who don’t.

We had a craft table at our LOs 4th birthday with some cheap kits. It was way more popular than the bouncy castle or race track that we’d paid a lot of money for

Very jealous of your calm children hahaha

We did musical chairs with that age group and it was carnage. Everyone ended up crying (I was tempted to join them by the end!!).

I'd go for pass the parcel with a sweet in each layer and musical statues, wih kids being given applause and a sweet as they get called out- much less brutal for them 🤣. Also games where they get called out in groups like "corners".

What @RedGreenBlackGrey said, they bloody love balloons. For DDs 4th we had a bouncy castle one end then on the other side of the hall we had a wireless speaker we could connect to my phone and a playlist of kid appropriate songs. We blew up loads of balloons and chucked them on the floor in the music end. Bouncy castles are really noisy so if you do music it needs to be away enough or they won’t hear it.

physical toys / games all the way. I’m not sure at 3 and 4 any kids would sit down to a craft amongst all the excitement, plus it usually means parents then have to get involved, you can’t lose the creation, if it goes wrong there will be upset, etc.

We did a hall party once that had a
bouncy castle as main attraction plus physical toys like stomp rockets, a “floor surfer” ride on toy, hula hoops, playsilks, some of those mega bouncy moon balls, stepping stone balance toys, etc laid out around it. We bought some things off Temu but had others at home already that we packed into the car. Plus loads of balloons. It was a bit like a play group. Kids absolutely loved it. At that age I found dojng party games often caused confusion / upset, although pass the parcel could work

Colouring tables have always gone down really well at the 4 year old parties I’ve been to. Gives them a break from bouncing. It’s not much cost/effort to set up (you can print colouring sheets from the Crayola website) and if it’s not used you can use it all at home.

I've been to lots of parties recently where there are kids turning/already 4 and some still 3, and I'd say it's about 50:50 on whether they like organised games or not. They can mostly get on board with pass the parcel. But musical statues etc, a few won't join in at all, others will join in but get upset when they're out, and you need to be really generous with the prizes. Things like face painting and glitter tattoos have been popular.

Don’t over think it- All you need is some balloons!

I wouldn't bother with pass the parcel. I have seen it attempted at a couple of 4 year old parties and it wasn't great.
We did a fun run type bouncy castle, didi cars and a bit of a craft table (I printed out a load of pictures for them to colour in).
Balloons...there is always at least one kid who is terrified and one who is intent on popping them all, so not sure about them. If you get them, get reasonable quality ones that don't spontaneously pop.

The other weekend I took DS to a 4th birthday party that had a bouncy castle. They did try doing games - musical chairs and What's the time Mr Wolf but they were a bit chaotic tbh. I got the feeling party mum had planned more games but gave up after those two! They turned the bouncy castle off during the games to get the kids to join in.

If you wanted a craft activity you could get blank white crowns and have stuff to colour in with/stick on?

Pass the parcel is good but have at least 2 parcels going round the circle to keep them interested!

Agree with pp - balloons and more balloons. And a pump to blow up more when the first lot all go pop. if you get a couple of the hand pumps the kids could have a go at doing it htemselves.

Thanks everyone going to keep it simple with the bounce house, balloons, bubbles and some colouring stations 😊

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Not sure if they’re a bit young, but a couple of times we got plain cotton tote bags for the kids to decorate and did a lucky dip (filled with all the tat from previous parties plus sweets) which they put in their self designed party bags.

Kept them occupied for a while, got rid of a box of random stuff, and didn’t need to put any effort into putting party bags together.

Bought them on Amazon and worked out about a quid each.