Share your top tips for children's birthday parties with Cadbury and you could win a £200 Love2Shop voucher NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

Cadbury would like to hear your top tips for hosting a great themed birthday party for your DCs.

From pirates to Peppa Pig, baking to science - if you've thrown a great children's party, what theme did you choose and how did you bring it to life? Did you use decorations to set the scene, choose party food to fit with a fantasy world, or tailor activities you knew the kids would love? What did you put in the goody bags to go with your theme? And did you create a special birthday cake?

We'd love to hear about all the different ways you incorporated your child's favourite things into the day - to help inspire other parents who are party planning.

Everyone who shares their birthday party ideas and inspiration on this thread will be entered into a prize draw to where one MNer will win a £200 Love2Shop voucher.

Please note your comments may be included on Cadbury's pages on MN, their social media channels, and possibly elsewhere, so please only post if you're comfortable with this.

Thanks and good luck,
MNHQ

If you are unable to keep the numbers low, then ensure that you enlist the help of other Mum's so that you are not overwhelmed. Plan party activities that are not too competitive and where everyone receives a prize.

The simple games are the best - musical chairs, sleeping lions!

Have an activity to do immediately to engage with the children. Try colouring birthday hats or putting stickers on a "Happy Birthday" sign. My other half read this somewhere and it did help.

Finger foods. Pizza cut into shapes with pastry cutters. You get allsorts from space rockets to sharks to dinosaurs. Make up a couple of compilation cds of music kids love to dance to. I don't really do themes. Rather let kids come fancy dress and be anything/anyone they want. I like to use community halls. or the local amateur football club which are very reasonable to hire for an afternoon and let you prepare the room before hand with decorations/balloons. Games can be fun too. Egg and spoon races etc,,and best tip of all,,,It's for the little uns.

I think the first thing is to stay calm! I have also found that hiring other people can definitely work out sometimes. However if you are doing it all yourself then I do recommend baking cakes etc a good few days before and freeze until the morning before the party simply defrost and ice everything and for other food just keep it simple and try to keep it healthy too!

My number one tip for a successful party for little children is look after the parents that stay.Make sure they have a drink and their own food and somewhere to sit and chat. If the parents are happy it will be seen as a good party!

My best themed one was a Gruffalo party. I made headbands with mouse ears on and gave all the children one to wear. I got a soft toy owl, snake and fox and placed them around a trail. We walked round and I told the story, stopping by each animal. The children loved it. I made a Gruffalo chocolate cake which looked and tasted great.

Lots of toys, balloons and pool of balls! :)

i like to get the children involved. to choose a theme and make the invites

Keep it simple and don't try to cram too much in! Simple traditional party games are always good, as is finger food!

For goody bags you can really get some great bargains if you shop around in the cheap shops (poundland etc) particularly for sweets.

Entertainers are all the rage at the moment but they can be so expensive, if your children have friends in their class with birthdays around the same time it can be really cost effective to have a joint party

Don't worry about the plans too much, they are just as happy running around and having fun (and some cake!)

We pooled resources with our antenatal group and had a joint party. Made the cost so much more manageable. Hired a hall, bouncy castle and my daughters singing class teacher. Was a great day and because there were 6 sets of parents we had plenty of help with the catering and clean up. If you have a Costco locally they do gorgeous giant cakes and sandwich platters to make it super easy. I think we ended up around £40 each and each invited 10 guests each. The kids had a blast.

We often have a theme, have done Frozen, Minecraft and Tinkerbell. Often use ebay for ideas for the party bags and have had a storyteller at home (cheap but entertains children), and have had several parties at soft play centre - not expensive if you don't have many children and they clear away all the mess! If you're doing the food yourself, you can get themed bits like napkins, boxes - we decorated the boxes for the Frozen party with glitter stars. Also do use boxes for food if you're providing it yourself - so much easier for portion control and children can take any leftovers home!

Plenty of healthy treats , Face painting and silly games.

We have had a few parties. Cooking at Waitrose, kung fu and bath bombs parties. I find the party bags work out very expensive. I bought bulk from the book people or can recommend the Horrid Henry books from poundland.

Dont go overboard on items for party bags, kids don't tend to look at them once they've left the party

My daughter had a school trip to an aquarium on the day of her birthday so I carried on the theme for her party with a mermaids cake and lots of seaside themed decorations and goodies in the party bags.

I've done quite a few now but the one described below is still remembered by other parents as the best!

Daughters birthday end of October so combined a magic party with a Halloween theme. Kids invited to dress up, outfits clearly easy options! Dressed hall with lots of cobwebs, bats and ghouly things.

All food was Halloween themed. Sandwiches such as blood (jam), tongues from monsters (ham), dandruff (grated cheese) all labelled and cut into shapes like bat, witch and spider. Witches fingers were made from sausages with flaked almonds as nails. Zombie pizzas, small pizzas with cheese zigzagged across, olives as eyes. Made jelly with jelly worms inside so kids thought they were eating worms.

I don't normally do party bags but everyone went home with Dracula teeth, a giant glowstick and a big smile!!!!!

Magician thought I was bonkers!!!

3/4 years ago my husband and I planned a 'gruffalo themed 4th birthday party' for our daughter. My children and I had planned it for months and months collecting cardboard boxes, painting leaves and making trees for a forest theme. We collected toilet rolls and made/painted a log pile house with a snake in it, an owl in the tree, a handmade Gruffalo pinata and a little mouse. I had the children wear t-shirts with a Gruffalo transfer/ iron on and my daughter wore her Gruffalo Costume. We played pin the green wart on the Gruffalos nose and sang Gruffalo songs and played Gruffalo games too. I printed out lots of activities from the Gruffalo website too. At the party we made Gruffalo/mouse masks and The little brown mouse finger puppets. To start the party off I had the Gruffalo story cd playing and as each child arrived they were asked if they would like to make their own Gruffalo decorated party bag and a prize was given to the best decorated one as we filled the party bags with treats. We had Gruffalo themed food ideas found on the website too. It was very fun and children and parents enjoyed it very much. Age of children was 1-6 years. We also make our own Gruffalo cake and invites too. It was most enjoyable planning the part making the party decorations and pinata but very stressful on the day. As it is very hard being the host and party entertainer for 50 children and adults. Preparing the room, cooking the food, getting everything and everyone to the venue and tidying it all away afterwards. Good to have family and friends who are more than willing to be on their feet helping out all day too. Good luck. Our children are only young for a short time so make happy fun memories when and where ever you can.

We still have a few art/crazy memories from our Gruffalo themed party

After planning a huge themed party 3)4 years ago we spent the next few years having small family/cousins only birthday parties. From going the cinema, bowling and tea parties at home. For my son's 3rd birthday (nearly 2 years ago) We planned a pirate party at home with a treasure hunt on our local beach. My children and I have always loved arts and crafts so it is exciting to be able to plan creatively for fun parties at home too. We have a beach/sea at the bottom of our road and a local community of (friendly pirates) These pirates have handmade our Trusley fabulous ' The Black Pearl' pirate ship for all the community and visitors to New Brighton Wirral to all enjoy. My son and I made a treasure chest out of an old pampers box and filled it with pirate themed treats. My son and I made a handmade made treasure map stained with coffee and the day before the party we set up the clues along our road and along the promenade, finishing on The Black Pearl pirate ship. The day of the party was great we even had the local pirates turn up too. Children and adults dressed up in pirate gear and went and found our treasure. We made hotdogs into ships and had pirate treat bags. More rewarding when it's so enjoyable, low cost and easier to manage a small amount of guests xx

More ideas for party games pirate themed

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Pirate party