Birthdays come but once a year, and are a magical time for children. They love the attention, the presents, the parties and the cake. To help plan your child's special day, here's a selection of sites with party ideas, game rules, printable birthday stuff and interactive fun.
For kids up to age eight, Amazing Moms offers twenty birthday party themes, and a dozen party games. Current hot themes include SpongeBob Square Pants (with bubble blowing, sponge painting and a game of Squidward May I?) and Scooby-Doo (with a toilet paper mummy relay race, a dog biscuit drop and a game of Ghouls and Ghosts.) Links to rules for traditional party games, such as Blind Man's Bluff and Mother May I, are found near the middle of the page.
Billy Bear's fifteen animal party themes are chock-full of printable goodies such as party invitations, name tags, coloring pages, tic-tac-toe game boards and thank you notes. They also include matching downloadable jigsaw puzzles and screensavers (for Windows computers) that can be copied onto floppy diskettes and handed out as party favors. Very clever! Themes include teddy bears, penguins, lions, magic dragons, honey bees, and elephants.
The history of children's birthday parties can be traced to Germany where they are called Kinderfeste. Today in Germany, birthday candles (one for each year) are lit first thing in the morning, and left burning all day. After dinner, the birthday child blows out the candles and makes a wish. Visit this site to learn how birthday parties are celebrated around the world, and add your own family's birthday traditions to the list via email submission. Look for the email address just under the "Family Birthday Traditions" heading in the middle of the page.
Kids Domain has birthdays covered with e-cards, party games, party themes, online games, downloadable games, birthday cake recipes, book suggestions and website links! There is so much variety here, it was hard to pick a favorite click, but I especially liked the twelve printable black and white invitations that can be colored by the birthday child. First click on Birthday Printables/Cards, and then on Our Cards and Printables.
Party Game Central is my pick of the day because of the size of its database and terrific search function. To find games perfect for your audience, start at Build Your Custom Game List, where you can query by age, group size, venue (indoors or outdoors) and activity level (passive or active.) And Party Game Central doesn't stop with kids games. You'll also find hundreds of games for teens, pool parties, bridal showers, baby showers, couples parties, and holidays.
Buy Birthday Parties Printable for $2.00
or try a FREE trial of the Printables ClubThe following links are either new discoveries or sites that didn't make it into my newspaper column because of space constraints. Enjoy!
100 Kids Party GamesDLTK Kids: Children's Birthday Party | Party Games Etc.Ways to Say Happy Birthday |
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