Help me plan games for a birthday party--age 6

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

OK, so my daughter is turning 6 this weekend and we’re having a party! She wants it to be a “balloon party”–so we want a balloon game and we’ll have water balloons at the end.

I need a couple of fun party games! What can we do with balloons, other than try to keep them up in the air indefinitely? Have you got a good idea for a pin-the-tail-on the something game? (When I was a kid, my mom made a “Pin the tail on Garfield” on poster board–big hit. What can I use for kids now, and don’t say pin the pants on Spongebob?) Any other easy party games we can do?

Help me!

#2

Fill several balloons in two colors with half-air/half helium, so that they are floaty buyt will sink. I don’t know how many kids you have, but have at least that many balloons ready. Put them in a room all mixed up, but diveded into two teams. The goal of the game is to keep all the balloons in the air. First baloon to hit the ground, the other team wins. Play many rounds, so that both teams win alot. If it’s too easy, throw in more balloons till they can’t think straight.

Hide slightly inflated balloons all over the house/yard with candy inside. Like an easter egg hunt.

Contests carrying way-way-overfilled water (or shaving cream!) balloons a given distance, though the inevitable pops might scare some kids.

#3

You know, I just did a party for my 10 year old. Birthday Party Express has some great ideas on their website and you don’t have to order their stuff.

#4

If you do gift bags you can make them all slightly different and number them. Put numbers on folded paper inside balloons. Have the girls sit on the to discover what gift bag they get.

A book on balloon animals, a little practice, and some balloon animal balloons and you could teach them to make something really easy (really easy, they are six).

Blow up balloons but don’t tie them. Let the balloons go and have the girls try and catch them.

#5

Heehee. Learn from a mistake my parents made many years ago. If you play “Pin the tail”, do not, under any circumstances, issue a pin to each child prior to starting the game…
:smiley:

#6

How about a balloon relay where the kids have to get to the other side with a balloon between their knees/under their chin?

As for other games, pass the parcel was always a favourite. The best way to play that, though, is to make a rule that when the music stops, the parcel gets unwrapped by the person before the one holding it, to prevent the kids from hanging on to the parcel forever.

#7

I’ve answered this one before:

Here’s a cheap game called “Frustrated Artist.”

You need a large pad of newsprint, markers (because of the newsprint, you want to get the kind that don’t bleed – bright-color highlighters work well), and some index cards.

Each player’s job is to draw a picture in 60 seconds and to guess what the others have drawn. They pick the subject from one set of index cards “You must draw a horse.” Then they draw a second card, which is where the frustration comes in. The second card is their handicap card, which tells them that they must draw the horse, for example, “blindfolded,” or “with the pen held between your teeth,” or “from three feet away with the pen tied to one end of a yardstick and you holding the other end,” or “with your left foot,” or any other bizarre restriction you can think of that makes drawing a horse difficult. No guessing until the 60 seconds of frustrated artistry are up. Players, if you keep score, get a half-point for guessing someone else’s subject and a full point for having theirs guessed.

This worked so well at a birthday party I wished I could copyright it.

#8

Oooh, oooh! Mr. Kotter!

I just threw my 10-year old girl a “Fear Factor” birthday party last year. If I may pat myself on the back, it was fantastic!

Everybody got points for each event and got prizes for 1st, 2nd, etc.

We started off by going bobbing for apples, only I put live goldfish in the barrel. I didn’t let anybody eat the goldfish, naturally, but everyone did get one at the end of the day.

Next, I made Nickelodeon slime (water, corn starch and food coloring). I took plastic bugs (from the 1$ store) and put about 10-each on some plates. On went the slime, and the girls had to grab a bug in thier mouth and have a relay race to another set of plates.

Then, I died some raw eggs this nasty purplish-green color and we had a “rotten egg toss”.

I then got baby diapers and I had the girls dump chocolate pudding in them. I then put a dozen or so coco-puffs in each diaper, mushed them together and they had another face-full-of-pudding relay race.

I made a kitty-litter birthday cake (google it) which was served by a pooper-scooper.

I think I had more fun than the kids.

#9

Thanks for the ideas, everyone, I will definitely be using some! 3 hours until the hordes arrive, and I have filled 60 water balloons, there are 30 regular balloons bouncing around the house, and we still need to finish cleaning up the birthday girl’s room–which will get trashed anyway. We are about to go pick up the cake, which has tropical fish on it for some reason. Wish me luck! :smiley: