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2 8 Fabulous Kids Party Ideas that won't cost you a fortune When my kids were little I often struggled to come up with new party ideas (this was in the days when the internet was just taking off!). Now I have grandchildren, the internet at my finger tips and a bit more time on my hands than busy mums, so I thought I would do a little guide to some great party ideas, with a few links thrown in to source bits and pieces to help with the party planning. Most of these ideas are relatively inexpensive and some require a bit of 'crafting', so if you have any crafty and artistic friends this is a great time to get them to help out. I hope you find these ideas useful. Feel free to use them for yourself or use them as inspiration to come up with some ideas of your own. 1. Teddy Bears Picnic This is a lovely idea for little ones. Lay out blankets on the floor and ask each child to bring their favourite teddy bear to the party. Use a large wicker basket as a hamper (lots of shops now sell these as storage solutions) and put all the food, cutlery and paper plates inside just as if you had gone on a picnic. Depending on their ages, you could let them take their own plates and food from the picnic basket. Food Ideas Make sandwiches and use a teddy shaped cutter to cut them into bear shapes. Use soft fillings such as egg mayo, dairylea etc. Bake bear shaped biscuits and decorate them with icing pens. You can get Barny Bear biscuits from the supermarket and also Pom Bear crisps. There are also gummy bear sweeties too. Have a hunt around the supermarket for bear shaped cakes and have a birthday cake made in the shape of a bear. Pin the heart on the bear - Draw a large bear on some lining paper and pin to the wall. Cut out some hearts from coloured paper and pop a little blue tack on the back of each one. Then blindfold the children and let them put the hearts on the bear. The one with the heart nearest to the proper place wins a small prize. Musical Bears - Sit the children in a circle and get them to pass a bear around as the music plays. When the music stops, the child holding the bear gets a prize.

3 Musical Statues - Play music and when the music stops, the children have to freeze in a 'bear' pose. Make a bear face from a paper plate. Take a white paper plate and draw on two eyes. Draw a nose on the bottom of a cup cake liner and glue into place. Flatten two cup cake liners and glue them to the top of the plate as ears. Dress the Bears. Using your child's outgrown baby clothes, let the children dress up the bears. Party Favours You could buy the children little baby bears to take home (you can find these quite cheaply in 1 shops) and you can also buy a printable to make a mini picnic basket favour box (print it onto plain card) to put some gummy bears and little chocolate bears inside. Buy PDF Printable for Picnic basket favour box Polka Dot (or circle) Party This whole party is designed around circles and polka dots and is great fun. You can decorate the room with balloons and pom-pom garlands and dress the table with a polka dot table cloth and little pots of skittles. You could cover large oranges in foil or crepe paper and stick round lollypops into them to create a dome shape. You could buy a small bubble making machine or hire one. Invitations can be made by cutting coloured paper into circles and decorating them with sticky dots around the edges. Food Ideas There are lots of circle foods you can find in the supermarket. Jammy Dodgers, donuts, mini pizzas, individual jelly pots etc. You can use a cookie cutter to cut the sandwiches into circles. Pop round ice cream scoops into cup cake cases and decorate with edible balls. Freeze until ready to use. You could have a birthday cake made in the shape of a large donut, or arrange a group of donuts in a tier and decorate them. You could have a cake made and covered in coloured dots.

4 Old Fashioned Egg and Spoon Race - This is great fun. You could use ping pong balls or ball pit balls instead of eggs and give the children an obstacle course to get over for a bit more fun. You could get the children to decorate their own paper plates and cups with round stickers, and also buy plain paper party bags and get them to decorate those too. You could use a child's ball pit and hide little prizes at the bottom for the children to find. Party Favours Use the paper bags decorated by the children and fill them with party bubbles, round sweeties and anything else fitting with the theme of the party. Paper bags for Party Favours - (or search on EBay) Pom Pom Garland Pirate Party Great for children of all ages and both boys and girls, a pirate party lets their imagination run riot. You could decorate the room with blow up parrots, jolly roger bunting and create some palm trees out of brown and green crepe paper and attach to the walls. You can also re-use Halloween skeleton decorations, adding eye patches, scarves and hats to them. You can make signs saying 'enter at yer own risk' and 'Pirates only beyond this point' and get a plank of wood and make them 'walk the plank' to enter the party. When they enter, give them a pirate hat and eye patch and a badge with their pirate name on e.g. Peg Leg Paul, One Arm Archie, Mad Eye Mathew and the birthday child's badge - Pirate Captain Nate. Invitations could be printed out using an old script font onto paper something like - 'Captain Nate is having a Pirate Party and needs shipmates to come and swab the decks, raise the sails and look for treasure. The ship sets sail on from Pirate Cove. Come if you dare, dressed in your pirate stripes. RSVP to Captains First Mate'. Use a wet tea bag to yellow the paper and then carefully burn the edges to make it look like old parchment. Roll it up and put it into an empty

5 plastic pop bottle and stick a skull and cross bones onto the bottle with the child's name on it. Food Ideas Take an old white sheet and stain it with tea bags and ripping the edges to make it look old and tatty. Use this as a table cloth. Dress the table with Halloween skulls and scatter with toy jewellery to look like pirate treasure. Make cupcakes and decorate with black icing and pop little pirate flags in, use labels to make the food exciting - blueberries become cannon balls, twigletts become salty bones, mini sausages - dead man's fingers, have some fun. Make blue jelly and pop jelly fish into it before it sets. For the drinks, you can call blue juice 'sea water' and red juice 'sharks blood'. For the cake, how about a pirate ship or treasure chest. Pin the eye patch on the Pirate - Draw or print out a picture of a pirate and attach it to the fridge. Print out some eye patches and glue some magnets on the back. Have a treasure hunt. Write the clues depending on ages, for example, for three year olds have them look for colour related clues - 'this colour reminds you of sunshine, this colour reminds you of grass etc. Decorate a large cardboard box to look like a treasure chest and fill it with 'treasure'. This is a great game to do at the end of the party as when they find the treasure chest it can hold their party favours, so they all get a piece of the 'treasure'. Take some toilet rolls and attach some elastic to the bases to form loops (these will go around the children's arms). Print off some blank parrot colouring pages and cut them out. Get the children to decorate a pair of parrots with crayons, stickers and feathers and the glue them to either side of the toilet roll. They can then wear their 'parrot' on their arm like a real pirate. Favours The party favours could be little 'bags of swag'. Take some brown paper bags and stick on a skull and cross bones with the child's name on. Fill the bags with chocolate coins, sweetie bracelets and sweets that look like jewels, such as wine gums. Tie the top of the bag with string. They can also take home their pirate hats and eye patches and the parrots they have made. Here are some useful links for a pirate party.

6 Parrot to colour - Printable Pirate bookmarks - Pirate hat and mini flags - Labels, table cards, mini flags Rainbow Party This party is a great way to get your children involved in the decorations. Draw some fairly large rainbows on a roll of lining paper and getting them to colour them in and stick them onto the walls to decorate the room. Make some smaller rainbows on paper and cut them out and use these as invitations by writing on the back of them. Allocate each child a colour of the rainbow and ask them to wear this colour (this makes a great photo, line the children up and take a photo of a real-life rainbow!). You can take this further by making each child a name badge in their 'colour' and tie a bow made from crepe paper at their place setting at the table. Use primary colour cups and plates and give each child their 'colour' to use. Make a balloon arch using groups of rainbow coloured balloons and decorate the room with bright coloured streamers. Food Ideas Skittles are a great choice for a rainbow party. Separate them by colour into different pots on the table. You can make different colour jellies and cupcakes with different colour icing on them. You could make a rainbow cake by using different coloured food colouring when baking the sponges, layer them together and cover with icing. Cut into it and you get a gorgeous rainbow effect. Another spin on pin the tail on the donkey is pin the cloud on the rainbow. Draw a large rainbow and cut a cloud out of card.

7 Depending on the ages of the children, you could get some plain white t-shirts and pots of coloured fabric paints and let the children paint rainbows on their own t-shirts. These double up as great party favours. Another idea is to get Fruit Loop cereals or coloured beads and get the children to thread them onto string to make their own necklaces and bracelets. For girls, you could paint their nails in different rainbow colours. Party Favours Rainbow coloured lollypops, smarties, crayons and rainbow pencils make great party favours. You could also put a large pot of gold coins at the end of a large cardboard painted rainbow and get the children to help themselves to a bag of coins (after all, we all know that there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow!). There are a great range of rainbow party product available here Storybook Character Party The theme for this party leads to so many possibilities! The idea is that each child comes dressed as their favourite storybook character. There are so many to choose from that I doubt that anyone would struggle to come up with ideas for costumes. There is Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Elsa, Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Harry Potter to name but a few. You could decorate the room by photocopying pages of children's picture books and making paper bunting from them. Take inspiration from your child's favourite book and the character they are going to dress up as and decorate the room to match, for example, for Harry Potter, paint the symbols of the houses on lining paper and pin to the walls, use a witches hat from Halloween as the sorting hat, hang paper 'candles' from the ceiling. For invitations you could make up little books from paper and tell the story of the birthday child, leading up to the celebration of their birthday.

8 Food Ideas Again, you could take inspiration from your children's character. For Frozen (Elsa) you could use coconut and food glitter to give the impression of ice on top of cupcakes. For the birthday cake, you could either go with the theme of the birthday child's costume or have a cake made in the design of a book. Blow up some red balloons and stick some white spots on them to make them look like mushrooms (one for each child). The idea of the game is that the children sit on their balloons and try to get them to burst. When their balloon bursts, they get a reward. You can get the children to colour in their own bookmarks. These are available to print off and the children can colour them in and decorate them with stickers. The children can also be asked to bring a book that they no longer read and they can have a book swap, so that each child takes home a new book. Party Favours A great idea is to buy cotton 'book bags' and decorate them with the child's name. You can pop things in such as mini colouring books, and they also get to take home the book from the book swap and the new bookmark that they have made. Here is a link for printable bookmarks to colour - Plain cotton bags can be found on Amazon and ebay. 6. Superhero Party Children love being superhero's so this is a great idea for a party. Decorate the room by cutting out lightning bolts and speech bubbles and putting quotes from the birthday child's favourite superhero in them and stick them around the walls. You could also make paper bunting from the pages of comics. You could make the invitations by cutting flash and star shapes from coloured card and inviting the children to a 'save the world/gotham etc' superhero party. Create wanted posters for the villains, such as Penguin and The Joker. Put a 'Welcome to Gotham/Metropolis etc' sign on the door to the party.

9 Food Ideas Make labels for the party food, to give the children super powers, eg, Invisibility Potion, Super Speed Sandwiches, Super Strength Sausages. The birthday cake could be in the shape of the birthday child's favourite Superhero symbol. Buy some black balloons, fill them with confetti and get the children to jump on them to explode the 'bombs'. Very messy but great fun. Cut out some superhero masks out of card and let the children decorate them. Make them some 'capes' out of plastic table cloths and print off some superhero symbols for them to stick on. (Link to tutorial below). Party Favours The children get to take home their homemade capes and masks with their superhero party box full of super power sweeties. Video tutorial to make easy superhero capes - parties.wonderhowto.com/how-to/create-super-hero-cape-party-favors / Printable superhero masks - Superhero party favour boxes - Yc2qauvuWvpZ2pxoC1Tbw_wcB 7. Mad Hatter Tea Party This theme is great fun, you can make it a full on Alice in Wonderland theme or just take inspiration from the tea party. Decorate the table with a colourful table cloth. Add teapots and china cups in lots of different sizes (planters and dolls house size teacups). You can pick these up relatively cheaply at charity shops or even hire them. Hide a stuffed toy inside a teapot to represent the dormouse. Place candelabras on the table and scatter it with keys. Make invitations to resemble playing cards or use paper doilies and you could word the invitation 'the Queen would like to invite you to play crochet in Wonderland, don't be late or it will be off with your head!' Decorate the room with giant playing cards and make large clocks out of card and set them to

10 tea time. Arrange different size and style chairs around the table so that the guests are all sitting at different heights. If you are going with a Mad Hatter theme, you could ask the children to come wearing as many hats as they can. Or they could come wearing bunny ears like the White Rabbit. Food Ideas Make little cup cakes and decorate with the words 'eat me' in icing and arrange them on cake stands. Make sandwiches and cut them into butterfly shapes to make 'Bread and Butterflies'. Add labels to the food saying 'eat me' and 'drink me'. Bake cookies in the shape of tea pots or buy square biscuits and decorate them with coloured icing (buy the icing tubes from the supermarket) to look like playing cards. Pour the children's drinks from a tea pot and call it 'tea'. Have a birthday cake made in the shape of a large teapot. Have a game of 'I'm late, I'm late'. Get some old pillowcases and create a course with buckets or boxes filled with items such as a cuddly toys, small balls (ball pit balls are ideal), a book and anything else you can think of. The object of the game is each child has to 'hop' and collect one item from each bucket and put it in their pillowcase, then hop to the finish line. The first child to reach the finish line with an item from each bucket and shout 'I'm late, I'm late' wins! You could also play a game of crochet, making the arches out of card painted to resemble giant playing cards. You could buy some artificial white roses and red paint and get groups of children to 'paint' the white rose red. First team to finish wins (this is great if you don't mind the mess!). Print off some pictures of roses and have the children colour them in. Boil some eggs to hard boiled and the children can decorate them with paint, felts, stickers, feathers and sparkles. Buy some plain cups and sauces and ceramic paints and let the children decorate their own cup and saucer. Buy some cheap straw hats and let them decorate them with feathers, sparkles, diamantes etc.

11 Party Favours The children can take home any of the things they have decorated (such as the cup and saucer) as a party favour. Give them a tea bag, small pack of playing cards and a cup cake (or slice of birthday cake) labelled 'eat me' in a little bag. I have found lots of great Alice in Wonderland items on EBay that are perfect for a party. There are some great packs with different Alice themes here : Straw Bonnets available here Cowboy (or Cowgirl) Party Boys and girls love the idea of being a cowboy! You can decorate the 'barn' with bales of hay from your local pet shop, cover the table with a red and white check table cloth and decorate the walls with 'wanted' posters with pictures of the guests on. Make the children name badges in the shape of sheriff badges with names such as 'Jimmy the Kid, Butch Thomas, Stagecoach Sarah, Rattlesnake Ryan' etc. and give them bandanas to wear, just cut rectangles out of a piece of fabric and leave the edges raw to fray a little. Ask them to come wearing cowboy hats if they have them. The invitations can be made to look like wanted posters and rolled up like a scroll. Food Ideas You can make or buy cupcakes and decorate them with green 'grass' icing and those little plastic animals that you can buy. Hot dogs, burgers and beans are great and to expand on the outdoor theme a cowboy party is a great excuse for a barbecue - every cowboy needs a camp fire! If the children are old enough they can even roast marshmallows over the 'camp fire'. Pin the tail on the donkey is the perfect game for little cowboys. Another great game is 'Digging for Gold'. Get two buckets and fill them with sand and buy gold chocolate coins in the sand. Split the children into two teams and give them a bucket and spade each. The children take turns in

12 digging for gold and the team with the most gold in their bucket after a certain amount of time wins. You can fill a horse shaped piñata with sweets and let the children take turns in trying to break it open. Line up a row of boots on a wall or table and let the children try and knock them over by throwing beanbags at them. Or, if you don't mind mess, line up some tin cans (baked beans cans are ideal) and let them knock them down by shooting at them with water guns. You can play country music and get the children to line dance (there are some great DVDs available for this). You can let the children make their own 'wanted' posters. Print off a photo of each of the children, let them use their cowboy names and in a cowboy hat place pieces of paper with dastardly deeds written on them. Each child picks one piece of paper out of each bowl and that is the 'crime' written on their wanted poster, e.g. 'WANTED - Rattlesnake Ryan for stealing all the cookies from the cookie jar'. Party Favours Each child can take a 'money bag' home with them filled with chocolate coins and a great idea is to fill little jars with popcorn. There are some great cowboy party themed items available here - So that's it, a few ideas for kids parties. I hope you will find this guide useful. If you use any of the ideas I would love you to share photos on my facebook page, Love Michelle x