This is my theory about parties for small children. Give them friends, food and room to run and they will manage the fun. Providing them with any additional entertainment is lovely, but you don't need to do it. On Sunday, the penultimate event of the Festival of Cherub took place in a park with 18 or so children, who were, for the most part, beautifully behaved and no trouble. They ran around the equipment playing their little hearts out, and came back to the food table to graze when in need of refreshment. They gathered for the birthday cake ritual, then went back to playing until their parents came to collect them. After two weeks of school holidays I think they were all overjoyed to see each other, judging by the hugging and the happy interacting. Apart from knocking myself out the day before with baking frenzy, and picking up the broken glass from the playground when we arrived I had very little to do on the day.
Well, apart from managing a couple of my party guests, who teamed up as a unit outside the rest of the guests. I was quietly relieved to hand them back to their parents after these 3 incidents:
- Early on, they strayed out of the designated area and began a rock throwing game and when asked to come back they (a) argued about having to do so and (b) tried to smuggle some rocks into their pockets. At least this gave me the heads-up that they needed extra supervision.
- Halfway through, they got into an altercation with a non-party child who had a few boundary issues of his own. I ended up taking non-party child over to his parents and saying I'm very sorry, one of my party guests has bitten your child but I believe there was hitting on both sides and suggesting delicately that perhaps they'd like to to keep an eye on their offspring. I didn't mention that he'd been coming over helping himself to party food, you can't blame him really.
- Just as all children were to be collected and taken home the 2 boys disappeared and gave me a heart attack. Luckily they had not gone far and I found them before the parents returned.
I'd recently read a comment from someone who claimed she spent $50 total -including catering- on childrens parties, which I found very difficult to believe, but it inspired me to see if I could cut costs. I always bake most of my own party food but I chose cordial over fizzy for the drink option and padded out the savoury options with popcorn. Plus I managed a deal with the Willy Wonka of Blogland for the lollybags, and these were so good that Climber looked up at me in the midst of helping Cherub write the labels for them and said seriously Can we have Shula for my party too?
The ultimate event in the Festival of Cherub was cupcakes for the class, first day back at school. Due to being completely wiped out by the morning's party and needing an afternoon nap to refresh myself, I didn't start baking these until 8.30pm Sunday night. They weren't the best batch I'd ever made, but I received only thanks and no complaints from the school next day.
Cherub has thoroughly enjoyed the Sixth Birthday Bonanza and thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes.
Next stop, Festival of Fixit.
