4 Crazy Olympics Party
Theme: Sport, Competition, Wacky games
Benefits: Lots of exercise. Good fun.
Preparation: Borrow a field, a school playground or head to the beach.
How it works: Split into teams and have a series of Olympic events that the children can do; similar to an adult circuit training course. Be imaginative about your events and fill them with birthday party games for kids. Employ some of your favourite family games if you wish, like a pass the parcel shotput or a pin the tail on an Olympic runner on the move! Remember this is the crazy Olympics. Make them run the 100 metres in wellies. Do shot put with apples and oranges. Have an equestrian event with a hobby horse and home made hurdles. Encourage them to create a waterless synchronized swimming routine. Any Olympic sport is fair game for a daft version.
Expenses: A picnic for the sportsmen and women (not forgetting the Crazy Olympic Committee) and sweeties for the best, or just the whackiest athletes.
Chariot Racing at the Alternative Olympics
5 Camping Party in the Garden
Theme: Overnight Camping, Bushcraft skills
Benefits: Gets the kids unplugged!
Preparation: Clear your garden of all the bikes, buckets, weeds, etc! Identify your site, and source a tent but don’t set it up beforehand. Make it a timed challenge. Even better if there are camp beds to blow air into. Source some head torches or bike lights so they can see their way to the toilet in the night.
How it works: Take a night hike first to add drama. Have a midnight feast (but probably not at midnight). Do it over the fire and make some smores. Make home made catapults with twigs, elastic bands and marshmallows. If it’s raining do indoor camping. If firelighting, take precautions to protect your surroundings and your kids. Remember to leave no trace. Even in your own backyard. Especially in your own backyard.
Expenses: A family bag of marshmallows.
Camping out whether on a campsite or somewhere wild makes for a memorable experience
6 Wild Camp Party
Theme: Bushcraft and survival skills, camping, wild places
Benefits: Building your own hut is a creative experience. Teenagers will be especially good at this, if you can persuade them to leave their hair straighteners and phones back home.
Preparation: Get permission from a landowner or neighbour to build a den on their patch. Bring some materials including tarp, wood, cardboard etc. Or if you’re feeling even braver, identify an island you can swim, canoe or raft to with all this stuff. Do make sure you have permission though. Do some research before you go. Books that may help include Outdoor Survival Handbook
Teach them some new skills like how to whittle or light a fire with a Fire Starter
How it works: You have to build your own shelter and sleep in it for the night. And cook your own food. Parties don’t get more fun than that. Best done in summer for everyone’s comfort. And if you are nervous you can always have a plan B like a tent in the boot in case the weather throws a tantrum.
Expenses: Food. Fire Starter
Camping on Farleton Fell Cumbria
7 Mission Impossible Party
Theme: A mission or mystery for everyone to solve with solvable clues and a time limit
Benefits: Fun to set up and fun to do. Keeps them motivated and engaged. No one will say ‘I’m bored.”
Preparation: Set clues, hide envelopes. Think up code names, imaginative rewards and a consequence if they don’t do it on time. We hired a pod on a campsite, with its own little patch of land and had a Pod Party. With a mission. If you don’t have the time or the ideas, you could try adapting some of the clues in a murder mystery game.
How it works: Have a running theme. Lots of clues, and treasure. It needs some planning to ensure all the little Tom Cruises complete their mission in time for tea or bed. A contained location helps so they can run around searching for clues without getting lost. Here’s the moment our kids opened their final envelope…
Expenses: Paper and envelopes. Treasure you can hide. (We used Kinder eggs). Prize for the winner.
Eco pod party!
8 Treasure Trail Party
Theme: A party based on the Treasure Trail maps. They are geographically based and bigger cities sometimes have several locations and themes to choose from.
Benefits: The planning has already been done for you. Also as you don’t know the answers you can join in.
Preparation: You can download the Treasure Trail guides or purchase hard copies online. We’ve found four or five people is about right to form a team; if you have ten then you are best to purchase two different maps.
How it works: If you have enough people for two or more teams then start them off at different times and get them to set the stopwatch on their phone. They can’t move on till they have done each clue and so you can judge the fastest when they get back to base. Some of the themed trails really lend themselves to an outdoor children’s party like the spy themed trail we did in London or a murder mystery.
Expenses: The maps and some small prizes. Also maybe snacks if the kids are taking ages to get the clues!
Get your spy kit ready if you want to do the spy trail party
What great ideas! We’ve done a camping party before and it was a big hit! We also did a garden party before where we planted small plants and then gave out seeds and small shovels instead of goodie bags. I hate goodie bags! It all ends up in the garbage. I think we may try the Olympic one next! That sounds really fun.
I think our society has become very materialistic. We seem to think we have to buy our kids stuff to be good parents. I love your ideas. My son is just getting to the age for birthday parties and we will keep these in mind. Thanks.
It may sound a bit worrying offering activities such as lighting fires without matches, but we have done these things for years now without incident. We are extremely
safety conscious, but we recognise that kids want to do some activities which just aren’t done these days. I can still point out trees in the local park which I built
camps in as a young boy, but I know I wouldn’t let my own kids go off at the age of 8 to build camps by themselves in the woods. That’s where we come in to offer those
experiences that aren’t so common these days.
Love the originality behind these party games, what’s even better is that they can be adapted and applied to all children’s favourite hobbies and interests. It’s always great when you’re able to create a bespoke children party.