Activities/games for a 2-Year Birthday Party

If it's for a bunch of princesses, how about a mini relay race? Get a couple pairs of dress up shoes and have the girls toddle in a race holding fairy wands or tea cups or something. Or how about an unofficial dance contest? Put on some rockin' tunes and have the kids jump and dance and boogie (and get tired out for their parents!)

mostly we had a big playdate, but something fun (albeit messy) was to give each kid their own cake (we did molded car cakes - got the mold at Williams Sonoma) and dixie cups of icing and decorations. the kids loved it. it was messy though.......

Hi C.- For my son's party, we played a game that was a big hit!!
I wrapped a bunch of boxes in other boxes and we played hot potatoe and whenever the music stopped, someone had to unwrap the present, if they had the box not wrapped they won. Well I wrapped so many boxes that all the kids kept laughing and were so excited to see who would win!!

A side note- I later went back and saw you were supposed to just wrap one box with different wrapping paper but I think the kids had more fun seeing a smaller box and couldn't believe there would be another box inside the smaller ones!!

Hi C.,
I think that at two, you are right to kind of stick to the basics. Kids love Pin The Tail on the Donkey, Ring Toss, Clothespins In A Bottle, Bean Bag Toss and I haven't met a kid yet who doesn't like to rock out to the limbo with a limbo stick! Good luck and have fun!

what is your theme and i can come up with some. some of my kids previous parties were: ariel, blues clues, ducks, wizard of oz, elmo, dora, shrek, toy story, incredibles, & high school musical. let me know

My daughter turned two in December. I did a sticker activity with the kids and they loved it. Since it was near Christmastime, I drew evergreen trees on 11 x 14 poster paper. Then I wrote each child's name at the top. I gave them a bunch of holiday related stickers and let them create a scene. Once finished, cover the paper with clear contact paper (front and back) and tehy can use as placemats.

Well, in my opinion, I wouldn't have any organized games at all. Your daughter is 2!!! At my daughter's 2nd Bday, we had a nice sized group of toddlers who had a blast playing with the toys we had at the house. I just got all of her toys out and placed them around the play area, then let them go! They had a great time! When they needed snacks, I brought in a tray of chicken nuggets and veggies, handed out juice boxes as needed. They ate when they were hungry, and just played to their hearts content. After a while we served cake and opened presents. The adults took turns supervising the kids to watch over teh "MINE MINE" factor, but we were all able to socialize ourselves. It was very laid back and everyone had a nice time.
I think, it's a shame when parents try to plan every detail and don't let their kids be kids!!! It also makes you crazy, and at 2 years old, she'll never remember it anyway!! Just enjoy the day!
Good luck!

Hi C..... Check out the website

www.birthdaypartyideas.com

You should find alot of great activities there!

Rent a bouncer. Have duplicates of most toys so there are no sharing issues. Have them decorate their own cookies/cupcakes. Have relays (think loading wagons, balls, hula hoops, etc.). Think oversized paper and murals with washable markers or crayons. Decorate crowns/ paper hats.

Hope that helps! :) HAVE FUN!!!

One fun thing that I did for my daughter's 2nd birthday (MANY years ago! LOL) that she loves that she has now, is that I got a large sheet of paper (posterboard, easel paper, banner paper) and wrote Happy 2nd Birthday (name) on it. As each child arrived, I gave them crayons and had them color on the sign and had their mom sign their name near their coloring. Since one of those children has since died of cancer, it's all the more special to us to see her name and her little crayon marks there. Get lots of video and pictures - but assign a friend or relative to that, you won't have time yourself! Cherish the day, don't schedule TOO much. Just let them play and enjoy each other.

If this is age specific to just 2 year olds you may just want to keep it to large object play unless you have someone helping you. I am sure that You know how children love to put things in their mouth, ears nose, etc.
Bouncing small beach balls or a small nerf style ball using a sheet like a parachute is fun. You can have them bounce high – bounce low – bounce fast – bounce slow. You may play some simple musical games (Simple Simon) Children love music and “dancing” . Put on a Children’s CD – Or you can do it acapella -you can do songs and fingerplays or acting out the songs (farmer in the dell, ring around the rosie, etc) “Freeze” the music, they really like the starting and stopping and you can give a stamp on their hand at the end, for stopping well etc. Children at this age and older L-O-V-E bubbles. If you have a bubble machine all the better. (Just a word of caution if you have hard surface floors this can become slippery – need to use caution here) I would limit it to just one or two guided activities at this age, and do it prior to the cake. Play some quiet music have the moms rock or sway their little ones to the music. Then choose a short story to get them settled in before sitting and singing Happy Birthday. If you have a Polaroid camera you can have someone take some fun pictures of the children doing these activities and give them out to take home. Just a few off the top of my head.
God Bless!
M.

I am so glad you asked this!!
There is a book called "The Toddler BUSY BOOK...365 creative games and activities to keep your 1 1/2-3 year old busy" by Trish Kuffner.
VERY creative, VERY cheap ideas...it has been a lifesaver, especially in this weather!
Have fun!! :)

We've always had a simple craft for the kids that was related to the party theme. It worked for all different ages- the little ones get helped by their parents (or family members you can beg to help out with the craft, which is what I do). Thankfully, my sister did that kind of stuff for her job and she had all the supplies and ideas. You can find ideas online or make up your own. Most of our crafts involved foam board. My sister would pretrace the shapes out. I usually have coloring pages for the kids who don't want to or can't do the craft or whoever finishes quickly (or just can't focus for too long). We've done Spiderman magnets(they cut the pretraced face and eyes out of foam board, glued them, and drew the spiderweb on his face, and stuck the pre-cut magnet piece on the back), space shuttle windows (they decorated black paper plates with star, planet, and astronaut stickers and glitter glue markers, then covered the plate with clear cellophane held around the edge by some cool, pewter brads), bat masks (cut pretraced bats out of black foamboard, cut out the eye holes, they did something with yellow foamboard too, but I can't remember, then they punched holes on either side and we put stretchy string through them), and dinosaur masks (similar idea with pretraced dinosaurs too choose from on foamboard). My sister always had a sample one already made for the kids to look at as an example. They sell precut doorhangers, etc. and all different shapes and themes of foam stickers, too. So, you wouldn't even need a bunch of scissors and glue if you wanted to go that route. You could also try some cute crafts that involve pipe cleaners and pompoms and some googly eyes. You can make all sorts of creatures out of those. ACMoore or Michael's craft stores would have the stuff I mentioned and more. You could do a snack thing, having a couple ideas for them to choose from depending on what snacks they like (like making a caterpillar, bug thing out of a banana with pretzel stick legs and m&m eyes or something). I'm sure you can get more ideas online. Don't forget to try to relax and have some fun, even if it all doesn't go as planned. Don't plan too many things. It goes by so fast, you probably wouldn't get to them all anyway. Plus, you don't want to go crazy!

there is a neat game where the kids carry eggs on spoons and then give them to next person to carry. Like a relay race. Hard boil the eggs first of course unless you would like to clean sticky egg off your floor.