Entertaining young children

[RevealTheHiddenBeach]

DP and i are getting married this August, in a village hall, hopefully quite an outsidey wedding. We have four very small people coming (and possibly a newborn but I feel this is unlikely) : 7 months, 1 1/2, 2 1/2 and 3 1/2.

There's a lovely little play park outside, and we're getting croquet/quoits etc (for the grown ups as much as the children), but if it's raining, what do I do? Is it better to trust that the parents will bring entertainment, or would you expect it to be provided - and if so what's good? I have incredibly limited experience of anything pre-primary...

We did age appropriate party bags for the children at ours as we had a winter wedding at a place with no outside play.
They went down really well with the children and parents

We're also doing gift bags for the children . things like colouring stuff , some bubbles, stickers, sweets just to keep them occupied for a bit

Thank you for the thoughts! Sorry to sound ridiculous... but what are age-appropriate for kids that young? Once they're a bit older (ie 5 or 6 plus) i'm quite confident with what might help... but I have no idea with the really little ones! I don't have masses to spend but want to make sure they and their parents feel a bit catered for/looked after...

All kids like crayons and stickers!

maybe a little teddy (pound shop) with a home made name tag on for them each.

I went to a wedding recently where they had colouring in sheets with pictures of brides and grooms, and wedding cakes etc, and a little table and chairs for them to sit at.

Definitely do gift bags! We went to a wedding recently where the bridesmaids whizzed round at the first in-betweeny bit with them and they were a lifesaver. You can't go wrong with:

Bubbles
Crayons and a little pad
Stickers
Balloon

Other stuff you could put in:

Choc buttons - ours had sweets which DD (2) hasn't had and I don't want her to have yet, but chocolate is ok - of course everyone has their own limits. Raisins are probably a good bet and come in nice little boxes good for gift bags.

Bouncy castle. Definitely. You can hire them for about fifty quid, they'll come and put it up for you and collect it at the end of the day. The kids will remember your wedding as the Best Wedding Ever. A friend of mine did this and my toe still refer to it.

*two not toe, bloody autocorrect

Ok, so crayons, bubbles, buttons. Can totally do that. I thought maybe something like a plastic dinosaur, that they can walk around and "rawr" with too?

Although a bouncy castle sounds awesome, I think we are covered for fair weather as there is a play park at the venue, and if it rains we will have no space for one indoors, so it will have to be a party bag job!

A play park will do just as well!

Party bags would be great, maybe add a couple of toy cars (one for each hand) esp if they are boys. My two boys, 11/2 and 31/2, wouldn't colour but they'd love stickers, balloons, bubbles.
Packs of toy cars can be found in all big supermarkets we do love a vehicle or 10 here

And YY to plastic dinos! Great idea, mine would love that!

Jigsaws.
I got some fab readymade gift bags off eBay. They had a press-out cardboard castle, pirate ship or farm scene plus a quiz/coloring, pens etc. Only a few quid each.

Nails, I genuinely read that as 11.2 and 31.2, and thought 'well i'm not surprised a 31 year old wouldn't colour'... on the re-read it makes much more sense!

Will def look into cars and jigsaws too, and might head more for the toys instead of colours. We'll have balloons around the venue anyway, so will maybe have a few non-display ones that they can play with?

I'm taking DD to a similar sounding wedding in August. I am going to take a beach bag full of stuff to entertain her & other small DC. A ball, bubbles, colouring, small games, stickers.

A bouncy castle sounds like a great idea as all kids love them!

Another question (sorry)... where it says that basically every known toy in the universe is unsuitable for under 3's... is that true? What on earth could they really do with a plastic dinosaur/car? And if it is true... where can I find cars/dino's that ARE suitable for under 3's?

This is a minefield... soooo obviously not a parent.

All the tiny toys (with potentially detachable bits which could then become choking hazards) are labelled as not suitable.

Ask if anyone has a crate of Happyland tor crates of Megabkocks hey could bring on the day to share?

Must make better use of the space bar

Nothing fun is suitable for the under 3s

As long as toys are a sensible size with no fiddly bits, they're fine.

Megabloks tub is a fab idea. Mine would definitely like them.

Do you have a friend that won't be bringing their children that could bring a tub of duplo or visit a car boot sale?

The only difficulty with one of the parents bringing their own is that dc that age can be quite territorial over their stuff.

We got married recently. We had a couple of giant bubble wands, a giant skittles set, one of those tennis ball and sticky pad-catch things and a couple of footballs for outside. It kept the kids occupied for ages.

Inside we had a kids area. We borrowed a couple of huge bean bags from friends, which were fab for the kids to sit on and also very handy when they started dropping to sleep as they were all on the bean bags. We also had crayons and books, and a bag of dress up accessories...huge glasses, wigs, cowboy hats etc. We had some fab pictures of the kids (and grown ups) with things on.