If your kid is anything like ours, they probably started telling you what they want their birthday party to be like in the car on the way home from the one they’ve just had. But the secret to a great party doesn’t have to be months and months of preparation. In fact, we’ve got a quick and easy four-step party plan that you can do in just one afternoon. So let’s get this party planned.
It’s so easy even your kids could do it themselves, so you can sit back with a cuppa and watch the magic happen!
In this blog, we’ll be making:
- Invitations for the kids to personalise
- Eco-friendly decorations to make together
- Party games to get the energy up
- Party bags that still bring delight while sugar-light
Invitations
Step one is the invitations. You can often find books of invitations in newsagents, booksellers, and even dollar stores, so all you have to do is fill in the details. You can also pop into programs like Word or Canva on the computer and make your own!
For a simple invitation, all you need is the four Ws— who, what, when, and where.
You can also grab snippets of colouring book line art to decorate your invitations with, then let the kids go wild with some crayons and stickers!
For the adults, it’s good to include anything that might be different from your regular playdate at the park. If you’re feeding the kids, you might ask for any food allergies to be RSVP’d. Dedicated spaces like indoor play centres might require you to bring socks, so this is another thing to note.
Eco-friendly Decorations
Step two is decorations. Especially if you’re holding the party at a public park, it’s a good idea to use decorations that are light on the plastic and eco-friendly. You could use crepe paper streamers, compostable balloons, and even these super-easy paper chains we’re making for our birthday here at Tinta!
For our paper chains, you’ll need:
- Some A4 paper
- A pair of scissors
- A gluestick OR a stapler and staples
- Something to decorate with
For some really cracking chains, you could use coloured paper and of course loads of crayons!
The first thing to do is cut your paper into strips. An A4 sheet of paper will generally give you about six 5cm wide strips if you cut from the long sides of the paper. A 7cm thickness will give you a lovely chunky chain with more space to decorate, where a 3cm thickness will give you a daintier chain. It’s all up to you!
The next step is decorating your chain links. You can use all kinds of things here, from stickers and crayons to glitter glue and even some bright paints.
When your links are done, all you have to do is attach the ends together. Staples are faster and have a better chance of keeping the chain held together even in high winds, but you can also use gluesticks. Just attach the two ends of one strip together to make a circle, then thread the next strip through the circle and attach the two ends of the second strip together. Rinse, repeat!
To hang your chain, you can use sellotape to stick it to walls, or string tied around railings or rafters. It’s that easy!
Party Games
Step three is to think about the party games. Like the party itself, you don’t need to go all-out on the prep. Here’s some classic kids’ party games that will work anywhere, anytime.
Musical Chairs
For a game of musical chairs, all you need is some chairs and something to play music on. You can even use your phone.
Arrange the chairs in a circle facing outwards, then start the music. When you stop the music, everyone will have to find a chair, and the ones left without chairs will be out for the game. We recommend starting with enough chairs for everyone in the first couple of rounds, so everyone can find their feet.
When everyone knows what to do, you can start taking away some chairs, one at a time. In later rounds, you can take away two or three if the kids are keen.
If you’d like to, you can award a small prize to the winner, but you don’t need to, we recommend our dinosaur crayons.
Pass The Parcel
Pass The Parcel is just like Musical Chairs, but instead of getting to a chair it’s getting the parcel to be in your hands when the music stops.
There’s two main ways you can make a Pass The Parcel. One way is to wrap some small prize (like a lolly or pencil eraser) in most or every layer, leading up to a bigger prize in the middle. Or, for less prep and a bigger incentive, you could go by Lucky’s dad’s rules from Bluey and include only the big prize in the middle.
What’s The Time, Mr Wolf?
‘Mr Wolf’ is one of those classic party games that really gets kids running around.
To play, one child is chosen to be the wolf. They must then turn their back on the rest of the kids. The other kids should then line up about 15 to 50 steps away from the wolf, depending on how long you want the game to go for.
At the start of each round, all the kids call out “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”. The wolf will say a time between 1 and 12 o’clock, and the kids then have to take that many steps towards them.
When the other kids are getting close, the wolf can change their answer from a time on the clock to “dinnertime” and chase the kids back to the starting line. Whoever is tagged by the wolf then becomes the wolf for the next game.
A similar game is ‘Red Light, Green Light’.
Party Bags
Step four is the party bags that go home with each kid after the party’s over. Like the invitations, you can find packs of party bags at any supermarket or dollar store.
For an eco-friendly touch, you can use paper lunch bags.
To reduce sugar in them, you could include healthy snacks like boxes of sultanas, muesli bars, or air-popped popcorn. You can also add other trinkets like our party favour crayons, spinning tops, and small figurines.
For a bright and colourful thank-you, you can also include some of our A3 double-sided colouring sheets, with some crayons too! You can choose any crayons you like in any of our colours, and even mix and match! Plus, they’re eco-friendly, hand-made, and perfectly safe even for little kids.
We hope you’ve got some great new ideas for your kids’ parties now. We’re using this handy method for our Tinta birthday party in October, and we’d love to share it all with you! For the inside scoop, you can sign up to our newsletter in the box below. If you’d like to share your awesome parties with us, head over to our socials and give us a shout-out. We wish you all the best weather for the big day, and we’ll see you next time with plenty more fun ideas for you and your kids!
love, Team Tinta
