DangerGirl is turning 4 this week, and she wants a “silly hat” party. Which I think is a pretty cool idea. We will make big paper hats (they look like top hats, only Seuss-sized and of colored butcher paper) and decorate them.
We can either have a hat-shaped cake (a triple-layer with two small layers on one normal-size one, for a boater-type look), or decorate cupcakes with candy. I have not yet decided.
But I don’t have a lot of ideas for good games. I need two, I think. It will be 4-6 three- and four-yo kids, and it would be good to have one be hat-themed. They’re too young for musical chairs, and it will be hot, so serious running-outdoors games won’t be a good idea.
Experienced birthday-party givers of the Dope, help me out!
Do you mean that you and your daughter will decorate them or the guests will? Because if you meant just you and your daughter why not have the guests do it instead?
Also how about pin-the-hat on the donkey?
Or instead of musical chairs could you do a mexican hat dance type of activity, where all the kids dance around the hat/s? Doesn’t have to be goal or winning oriented really.
Even just going to your local thrift shop and loading up on hats and having a dress-ups time could be fun.
Or find some hat-themed kids books and get the right types of hats to wear while you read 3 books (baseball cap, straw hat, rain hat for example)
You could play “stack the hats” and whoever can get the most hats on her head at once without them falling off wins.
Hope this helps, I’ll be back if I can think of anything else.
No, I mean that I’ll make the hats ahead of time, and the kids will decorate them at the party (thus “making” hats). The actual hat construction requires packing tape, glue, and drying time.
Could you have some sort of relay race where each team of kids passes their hats to each other in turn, until the original hats are back on the original heads?
You could set up a grid of hats upside down, like the fish bowl game at fairs, and have the kids try to throw ping-pong balls into the hats. They get the prize in the hat they get the ping-pong ball into.
Those plastic red, white, and blue, patriotic hats they sell for the fourth of July should be on sale now. You could serve the party treats out of them, should you have any.
You could have an egg race (hard-boiled, of course!), with the goal being hats at either end of the course. You know, balance the egg on a spoon and get it to the other end. You can’t go fast, or your egg falls off your spoon.
Other than that, I really like Twiddle’s Mexican hat dance, book, and stack-the-hats ideas. I can see my littlest cousins (ages 4 and 6) having lots of fun with those. And you can’t go wrong with dress-up.
There is an old story about a cap seller who carries his caps in a big stack on his head, but on this day someone (a monkey?) keeps taking them–or something like that. I can’t remember the name, but someone will be along shortly who will, but reading it to them could be a great lead-in to the stacks-of-hats game, or maybe a way to get them all to calm down a little after a more strenuous game.
Also, a hat fashion parade after they all finish decorating their hats. An adult could do the descriptions as they walk down between the rest of the kids seated on either side. “Here comes Martin in his marvelous creation of silver and green. Notice the fantastic use of glitter and fuzz balls. The addition of gummy bears and frosting from the as yet unveiled cake really sets this hat off from the others.”
Pin the hat on the donkey is a good idea, but it might be more fun if dangermom traced dangerdaughter on to large paper or plastic with markers and the kids were playing put the hat on [d]dangerdaughter**.
Toss the bean bag in a bucket, fits the theme if you replace bucket with hat.
If some of your decorations for the hats could include a small bag of feathers. You could play the feather game. Each child gets a small feather. On “Go” everyone blows their feather in the air keeping their hands down or behind their backs. Whoever keeps the feather up longest, “wins”. Or if you’d prefer not to worry about winning the kids will have a great time just trying to keep the feather airborn for the length of a kiddy song. Maybe the chicken dance? You do want to emphasize to the kids to keep their hands down though because if arms get wild, eyes might get poked. The kids always loved it, but we always had a child demonstrate it that could show them to do it with arms down, so they get the idea.
It’s not a hat game but kids enjoy balancing books on the head while walking from one end of the room to the next and it’s really not that far off from your daughters theme idea. Which I think is great by the way.
Another fun game for kids that age is to dress and undress from over sized clothes, including big shoes and a hat. This can be done in teams or if she’s four and you’re having just four kids they can probably all do it, if DangerDadoesn’t mind the closet raid. (We always went with you can have as many guests as you are years.)
My final suggestion would be to get a newspaper and show them how to fold a newspaper hat. Everyone’s first origami project!
Happy Birthday to dangerdaughter. Let us know what you decided to do and if you and dangerdaughter where happy with the party.
If you want to read them a story as a cool-down from the games, you could go Seuss. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is a classic and should be available at any decent-sized library.
A game like musical chairs, but different. We played a similar game at my 4yo daughter’s last birthday.
PASS THE HAT
Everyone sits in a circle. As the music is playing, they pass a hat around. Whomever is holding the hat when the music stops leaves the circle, and gets to choose a small toy from the “treasure chest.” They do not return to the game. Continue until everyone has a toy. This avoids a “winner/losers” scenario, which, in my experience, 4-year-olds do not deal with very well. Everyone wins this game!
Add-on: Balloons for balloon animals make great hats! Do an animal head on one end, then wrap the rest around the kids head and twist off. Or twist a bunch together and end up with an antler-type hat.
Make them put their hats on without the use of their hands.
Frisbee hat. Top hat or beret should work.
Pin the tail on the donkey (as mentioned), but instead of a blind-fold, they have to wear a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Or another game that requires a blind-fold.
Oh, crowd control: You need something to immediately get the kid’s attention and quiet them down (trust me). Having one thing to do that they know means “Shut-up and listen” will save you from screaming. Try something like: “OK everyone! When I say “Hold on to your hats!” you have to grab your hat with both hands and listen! The last person to do it has to spell hat 5 times out loud!” By then all but one will quiet down, and then giggle at the one spelling h-a-t over and over again.
Crowd control, part deux: If you need to explain or show or ??? and want them to sit down in an orderly fashion in front of you, lay down a piece of colored yarn/string/rope/ribbon. It provides a boundary (physical and mental) for them to adhere to. They will crowd right up to the line, but not cross it.
Have fun-
-Tcat
When my friend’s daughter had her fourth birthday party, I dropped by with my polaroid camera. I took a picture of each guest with the party girl while they were wearing silly hats that were used for one of the games. They played a version of musical chairs, the game started with each child but one wearing a silly hat, when the music stopped, whoever didn’t have a hat left the game and picked a prize, and got to chose which hat would taken out of the game.
The picture was put in a cute frame and given as a party favor. None of these kids had ever seen a polaroid camera before and were amazed. They thought it was much more advanced than a digital camera, and wanted to know where I got that “new” kind of camera.
