School is out, and now is a good time to help your child celebrate the end of the school year before family vacations, summer camps, or summer school take your child and one or more friends away from the group.
Be sure to include your child in the party planning. This enhances their decision-making skills and shows them how to think through a problem, i.e. what can I and my friends do that will be fun? Set a beginning and ending time for the party. We suggest 2 to 2 1/2 hours for children six to twelve.
Since the weather's getting better everywhere, we've planned a party for children ages six to twelve that will take place outside...at a nearby park...where the kids can use up some stored up energy from spending most of the long, cold winter indoors. Since kids can become rowdy at such events, it's essential for you to enlist at least one other adult and one or two teenagers to help you ride herd. Keep the number of guests to the age of the party host, i.e. your child is 6 so there may be up to 6 guests, 12-- up to 12 guests.
Although most parks have a play equipment area, it's also important to plan short, engaging games, and crafts with some sort of award for every child who participates. Since you want to encourage everyone to participate, have a "prize grab bag" -- winner(s) of an activity or game get an immediate prize-- then and hand out tickets to all who participated. Collect 3 or 4 tickets, you "earn" a prize from the prize grab bag.
One good game to start the party is a hula hoop contest. All you need is a stop watch and a hula hoop. Line the kids up and let them show their stuff. Winner gets a prize, everyone else gets a ticket. If you happen to have a tie, of course, you'll need to run a tie-breaker. Encourage the persons doing the hula hoop with shouting, clapping, whistling, etc.-- noises that will keep the excitement up and the persons needing to use their concentration and coordination skills.
Another excellent outdoor game is water balloon toss. Divide the group into teams of two, standing about a foot away from their partner. Line up the other teams and begin the balloon toss. If the toss is caught, each team member must step back one step (now about 2 feet away from their team member). When a balloon breaks, that team is out. Continue until only one team still has their water balloon intact. Winners get a prize; everyone who participates gets a ticket.
Shadow tag is a good running game; it's played just like tag, only the person who's "it" must tag the other person's shadow. Dress-up relay race is also fun. Divide the children into two teams. Have a child from each team run to a designated area where you've laid a pile of items for each child to put on (choose according to your guests and your availability of items) such an adult's over-size T-shirt, gloves, hat, work boots, sunglasses, tool belt or other belt, etc. When dressed, they run back and take it all off so the next child can put it on, taking the clothes off at the other end, etc. The game continues until the first team done wins. Hand out double or triple tickets for the winning team and one ticket to the others.
For a more quiet activity, give each child a paper bag in which to collect a list of certain objects, such as little pebbles, flower petals (found on the ground, not off a live flower), leaves, and sand. When the whistle blows, they return to the picnic table or designated area and are given sturdy sheets of colored paper and a small bottle of Elmer's glue. Each child is then to make a nature art mosaic picture with the items he/she has collected. Make sure the artists sign their name and send the pictures home for display on the family refrigerator door.
Other good outside activities, according to the age of your crowd, is face painting, a magic show, or having someone make funny shaped animals from balloons. Jump rope is a good outside activity as is dodge ball, using a soft or plastic ball about the size of a soccer ball.
At one very successful party my son wanted a piņata which I filled with wrapped candies (sugar-free) and tiny "fun" objects such as rubber spiders and worms, little plastic animals, small rings, etc. - the party supply stores are full of ideas. The piņata was hung by a heavy rope that was draped over a sturdy branch of a tree. The person attempting to break the piņata was blindfolded and given a plastic baseball bat. As they swung at the piņata, it was being raised and lowered via the attached rope. It usually took nearly everyone at least one turn, before we let the piņata be broken. Then everyone scrambled for the prizes.
At another party held where a narrow, shallow creek ran through the park, I stocked the creek with shiny pennies so the children could "pan for gold." Also fun, particularly for city kids, is to plan the party where there's a petting zoo. The idea is to keep the kids focused on having fun.
Part of the fun or any party are the eats. Be sure to have plenty of carbo snacks on hand for any children with diabetes, plus plenty of cold sugar-free drinks to quench everyone's thirst. Also pack a first-aid kit with bandages for any mishaps.
For the lunch, serve each child's lunch in a sand bucket (you can buy them at most variety stores, drug stores, or grocery stores), filled with lunch, perhaps a tunafish sub sandwich, a baggie filled with munchies (baby carrots, celery sticks, slices of apple, etc), and another baggie filled with two of our delicious oatmeal-raisin cookies. Include a paper napkin in each pail, and hand out plastic cups or cans of cold diet soda or small cartons of chilled apple juice or plastic bottles of spring water. Clean-up is everyone's responsibility. Bring a heavy-duty trash bag if your park or other area doesn't have trash bins readily available.
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