# Indoor 3 year old birthday party ideas please!!!



## Artmama (Apr 30, 2004)

I have about 12 kids coming to my house, ages 1-5 or so, a small house, plus all their parents. I am trying to think of an easy, inexpensive something to have for the kids. I am just thinking of something that will keep them interested and playing without me having to totally supervise, as I will be dealing with food etc. Plus any other cute birthday party ideas in general!


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## lexbeach (Mar 6, 2002)

For my twins' third birthday party, we did a treasure hunt with photographs as the clues. So, the first clue was a photo of the bookshelf, and in the bookshelf was a picture of one of our plants, and in the plant pot was a picture of the bathtub, and on and on. The kids loved it. It might be too boring for your older guests (for the fourth birthday we did a hunt with written clues), but it's great fun for the 3-and-under crowd. For a treasure at the end, one year we had playsilks which I had bought in bulk as blanks and dyed with koolaid, and another year we had polished stones.

Other fun ideas: we always make a piñata out of paper mache and put little animals in it. For the cupcakes, one year I made a couple of caterpillars by stringing them all together, and putting faces on the front cupcakes. This year we just used cocktail umbrellas as the cupcake decoration, with a sliced strawberry lying underneath, "at the beach."

I like to try to make the parties have as little waste as possible, so we use real dishes and cups and silverware (we just make sure our dishwasher is empty beforehand). And I don't want to send our guests home with anything that I wouldn't want lying around my house. So, every year dw makes little bags out of leftover fabric scraps for the "goody bags," and for the goodies we put in stuff like a mix cd of the kids' favorite music, a mini notebook and crayons, and an organic fruit leather treat.

HTH!

I do have fun doing the birthday party thing!

Lex


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## lyttlewon (Mar 7, 2006)

I went to a camping theme birthday. The kids got flash lights and the mom hid bugs all over the house and they got little buckets to put the bugs in and we did a huge bug hunt. There was a tent they played in set up in the living room. At the end the mom made a soup, meat was tootsie rolls, yellow M&M's were corn etc, and they all got a thermos full.


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## PiePie (Oct 2, 2006)

i would go to the library and get a cd with typical preschool musical games like hokey pokey, london bridge, etc. this way if the other parents don't remember the words, there's a built-in reminder!


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## PiePie (Oct 2, 2006)

Oh, I just reread your original post and you have a RANGE of ages. Not sure if the littlest kids can follow directions?


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## Benji'sMom (Sep 14, 2004)

Just have your child open his/her gifts first and let all the kids play with them the whole time???


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## Artmama (Apr 30, 2004)

Good ideas! I am really not good at this kind of thing, and plus I have company all week, a business to run... no time to be too inventive! I swear, next year I am keeping it way way smaller. Our parties always turn into ragers(yes even the kid parties) as our friends just casually mention it to other people etc. Anyway, I appreciate all the input!


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