Dd’s First bday party at home (Age 7) - tips pls?!

[Blossom4538]

Hi all,
So Dd is under assessment for HFA. She has never been keen on the idea of a “friends party” and tends to just have family gatherings at home.

This year, she decided she’d like a few friends over, after school, for a little play and tea party. We were originally inviting around 3 close friends, but this has now grown into 7 friends!

Originally planning just lots of play in garden (any ideas?) and less of the formal party games. However, weather forecast is now a little iffy and may be indoors. Any ideas of what would be suitable but fun to incorporate for an hour or so, before food?! 😬

What to avoid. I know she doesn’t want to do musical statues. She’s very much an outdoors girl and quite happy to play with bubbles, trampoline but I don’t want friends to get bored and also concerned about weather!

Any ideas? Thanks

We did all DD’s parties at home - she was diagnosed with selective mutism at 4 and ASD at 8 and wouldn’t have been comfortable away from home.

We always based the party round an activity - couldn’t play outside as DD has a winter birthday. A couple of times we’ve done a ‘build-a-bear’ type activity at home - I bought the kits online and they basically just stuff the toy. One year it was dogs and then we had games with the dogs they’d made. I remember cutting out tissue paper bones and they had to flap the bone to their dog using a rolled up magazine to waft it along. And a daft game with all the dogs on a blanket and then tossed up to see which one stayed on the longest!

Basically we avoided any game with children being ‘out’ - DD wouldn’t cope. Musical statues was ok as we asked for a particular ‘statue’ when the music stopped - tall, spiky etc and then ‘the best’ got a sweet or sticker - repeated til every child got one!

And we usually did some sort of treasure hunt - the dog year they had to find paper bones hidden in the party rooms.

I feel quite nostalgic now - DD’s now 13!

One of my favourites as a kid was my parents would hide cut up drinking straws around the garden and set up a little "shop" where you could swap them for e.g. sweets or more straws for bigger things like a pencil or stickers. Kind of a fun way to do a party bag, and if anybody is struggling or not finding so much you keep some in your pocket and can "seed" them around wherever they are looking, or go and help them find some.

Not drinking straws these days though I guess (or maybe paper ones!)

Thank you so much! I had planned lots of garden fun but looks like rain.

So far, I have beads so they can make bracelets....that’s about it!

I think it's called 'trip to mars' where you wrap up a mars bar and then take turns trying to roll a six - then you try and get into it with a knife and fork (wearing gloves but that might be too hard!). When someone else rolls a six your turn ends.

Decorating biscuits/cakes for the party tea

Was it this last weekend?? Hope it went OK!!