6 Year Old Birthday Party - Spring Hill,KS

My son has a July birthday and since he was 3 we have had birthday parties with friends. I generally have them earlier in the morning since it is usually so hot and most kids are up early anyway. The first year we did slip n slides, pools and sprinklers. The second year we went to Chuck E Cheese, then the next pump it up~Granted it cost more, but they were in charge and I LOVED it!! Last year one of my sons presents was those big water slides so we did that along with a campout. This year I wanted it more low-key and didn't want a millon kids at our house with all the rain we've been getting, so we are just going to the pool on a Sunday afternoon. Most of the kids invited have passes and we figured we'd do pizza and cake there and the kids would all have fun.

It seems like with any of my kids' parties all they really want to do is play and have fun with their friends so no matter what you do they will have fun. There are some gymnastics places in Overland Park that are really reasonable too. I think Elite is only $110 for 10 kids to play for an hour. You can add time to it and kids if you like and it is still cheaper than most of the others we looked into. www.elitegymaq.com I would just go with something your daughter is into and center the party around that. We had a real princess (Ariel) come to our house for my daughter's fourth birthday this year. It was less than $200 and she had the kids completely entertained for 1.5 hours. That price included our invites, party favors and craft for the kids, plus my daughter got some special presents from Ariel. I think it was called princessatmyparty.

I hope that helps you a little. I am the same as you when it comes to planning (or at least used to be) I wanted it all to be perfect from beginning to end, and then I realized that it is perfect if the birthday child has fun and her guests leave smiling!!
Good Luck!
Oh, I also wanted to say that when we do have more expensive parties, we don't usually buy our children big gifts. They get so many things from family and friends anyway and the party is their gift~my kids have never asked either, so hopefully we can continue this.

K.,

You could hold a Water Day party like they do at our daycare. The have lots of shallow pools with water, sprayers, plastic strainers, and cups. You could also set up one of those spray balls. We have discovered that having the party outside as much as possible reduces the mess inside. The kids are tired and ready to go at the end. A finding Nemo theme would work for a mixed group of boys and girls. If your daughter has 3-4 really close friends you could do a sleep over movie night.

My advice is pick a theme with your daughter and keep things simple. For my daughters fourth birthday we invited her whole daycare class. The party was a jungle theme. My two activities were a jungle moon walk and a paint your own wooden animal station. The cake was decorated with plastic monkeys. So instead of goodie bags the kids took home the painted animal and a monkey. My father rented the moon walk through the Marine Resources center for us for $50. It was a very simple party to pull off and not that expensive.

Good Luck,

J. N.

Dear K.
What I did was just let them invite 5 or 6 girls
that they weregood friends with. I let them decide what
games to play or just let them play and giggle.
Some games you can play ring toss around juice bottles and
pin the tail on the donkey who gets the closest wins a prize
and you can blow balloons up and put them down on the driveway and see who can pop the most balloons. I would do
little gift bags for thier guest. I would go to dollar tree
get some ponytailers and devide the one bunch up to where
each one got 4 ponytailers and put some bubbles and little
note pad and pen in a gift bag. I wanted my daughters to
give and not to allways exspect people to give to them on
their birthdays . Also my girls didn't start having birthday
parties until they were 9yrs old and they have one every other year. When they were little I keep it to Family only.
I thought of another time they chose 2 friends and I took
them to scrapbooking store where you could do alittle craft
project for $2.00 for each child I payed for it and then
we went and had pizza and at pizza hut if you tell them that
it was the childs birthday you got a free cake. and then the girls wanted to go to dollar tree and just look then to their
surprize I said they could pick out one thing they liked
that . Hope this helps. B. K

My daughter is only two so I don't have a lot of experience with parties. For her 1st b-day we had a "Ball"...invites appeared as though the guests were being invited to Cinderella's ball but when they showed up we had a ball pit, and a few hundred other balls and activities w/balls for favors (great way to clean out some of the party mess). Last year we did a dance party at daycare and I stumbled upon one the of the best party favor ideas last year...CDs! I had gotten so tired of useless cheap toys and candy from kids for favors at thier parties that went straight in the trash at our house. I was determined to find something cheap and useful! I went on i-tunes and downloaded some of my daughter's fav. songs and had favors for under $1/kid that they are still using almost 6 months later! Oh for the family last year we had a "Fancy Nancy" party based on her favorite book...everyone showed up in 'fancy' clothes(feather boas, marti gras beads, high heals, etc.) and we made things like the cupcakes, tiaras, etc. fancy with sprinkles and glitter.

Good luck!