Need ideas for 7yr old B-day party

[Sunik35]

Greetings Dis Friends!!!
Looking for some fun ideas for my son's upcoming sleepover birthday party.
My son will be turning 7 in September and would love to have a themed party for him.

 

[tjkatie1014]

My daughter was just talking about her favorite birthday party when she was seven. Don't know if a boy would enjoy it as much, but I don't see why not.

We had a carnival party. It was in an old Family Fun magazine.

We made a ticket booth and her older brother manned it at the front door and collected the presents and gave each child a bag with tickets. The tickets were used for the activites. Each activity had a prize and they were collected in the bag which was to be the goody bag.

If this is something that sounds interesting I could go into more detail about our activities and food. Just let me know.

 

[summerrluvv]

How about a movie party? I did that for my son in January (11th) and they all loved it. We showed Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

I set up a concession stand with popcorn, drinks and theater boxes of candy. I ordered some concession stand cutouts from Shindigz.com. I set up folding chairs and put a red carpet runner in the aisle. I printed out hollywood stars with each child's name and put it on the seat. Party City sells a huge banner that is movie party themed that comes with letters and numbers to personalize. They also had a lot of the hanging star decorations, etc. I bought a clapboard and put that at the cake table with his bday date and age on it. For favors I bought the plastic popcorn boxes and filled them with candy and cracker jacks and wrapped them in cello with a thank you tag. We also did some movie trivia after the movie was over and before we had cake.

Everything turned out GREAT! I can post some pics if you would like.

 

[disneygal2007]

We just had our kids combined b-day last month. One turned 11 and the other 7. We had a pirate themed party. Not The Disney Pirates. We had a treasure box Pinata and a treasure hunt. And the other kids did a scavenger hunt. The kids loved it and it was allot of fun. Allot of the party supply stores carry the pirate themes.

 

[Ksquared]

both the carnival and movie party sound great. will have to steal both these ideas. My daughter would like a sleep over this year for her 8th b=day but I think we could incorporate a fun movie into it using those ideas!

 

[hambirg]

Well. . I don't have any specific theme ideas for you. That depends on what your DS likes. BUT the teacher in me wants to give you some management tips. Have what we teachers call an entrance activity. Not all kids are going to show up at the same time. Have a themed coloring sheet that the kids can color while waiting for everyone else to show up, or let them decorate lunch bags with themed stickers and markers while they are waiting. Those can be their goody bags. Try to plan your time. . .say after everyone gets there you will play games. . .maybe 4 to take up an hour. Then dinner. . .it doesn't have to be elaborate. Kids love frozen pizza, burgers, or hot dogs. Then cake and ice cream and open presents. . another hour. I like to wind things down on sleep overs with a movie. Have everyone get in their jammies and sleeping bags and watch a movie relevant to the theme. . .serve snacks. . .popcorn etc. In the morning expect that the kids will wake up at different times. Have an activity. . video game? for the early risers. Keep breakfast simple. Kids love the build your own thing. . .cereal bar, build your own yougurt parfait, etc. Have an exit activity. I find that waiting for the parents to pick them up is a good time to let them play with the gifts DS got. One more thing. . .6-7 is pretty young for a sleep over. Be sure you have all the parents numbers. Expect that one of the kids might wake up in the middle of the night and want to go home.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is PLAN. Not so much the theme, etc. But the management of it all. Try to envision the kinks and have a plan for when they arise. I know it's the teacher in me, but I think if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Set up ground rules. Be reasonable. You don't have to be b*tchy. BUT this is your home and you are the master of your ship.

I think I feel so strongly about this because I was literally ambushed by a parent one time when I went to pick up my oldest from a sleep over. She met me at the door and ranted and raved about how terrible the girls were and that we needed to have a parent meeting about this. HUH???? Come to find out. . .she planned a sleepover the night before she had to work. The only activity she planned was dumping a huge amount of messy craft supplies on the dining table and letting the girls have at it. She didn't feed them any real food. . .just candy and sugar filled, artificially colored drinks. And then she was mad that she had to work and they wouldn't sleep. Well, DUH!!! Some of the other parents called me and asked what I thought. I was honest. She's an idiot! The girls were just being girls. . .completely appropriate and expected for their age considering the circustances. She's a parent. The fact that she couldn't see it coming was just complete and total parental failure as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sorry to go off on a rant here. :lol: I have had many birthday parties where my kids have invited the entire class. I went into full on teacher mode and never had a problem. Other parents have said I make it look so easy. I know it's not. .. and I'm not faulting anybody that isn't used to dealing with having to manage 28 kids everyday. But just use some common sense. Know what to expect and plan for it.

 

[Sunik35]

Great Ideas so far!!!! It will be hard to choose.
Thanks for the ideas and advice

 

[Eeyore's Wife]

My son's favorite birthday party was a Shrek themed party. We had a "Worlds Worst (best) Ogre Competition" The invitations announced to the invited Ogre that he/she was invited to a celebration to find out who was the grossest, messiest, and scariest Ogre of them all.

I suggested the kids wear old ratty clothes since we would be getting messy.

We had green face paint to turn all the kids the appropriate shade. They had a bugger eating contest which was comprised of green jello in small cups they had to slurp up with a straw. We had a Swamp Dunk competition. They went dunking for apples in a water that had been colored brown with a bit of oatmeal floating around in it.

There was a belching contest where the kids all got to drink a root beer and then see who could belch the longest, loudest, say the most letters of the alphabet in burp mode.

In the farting contest they competed for who did the best, loudest, and most realistic armpit fart noises. Those kids were so funny I about died laughing during this part of the party.

The Swamp Rat Fling was a huge success, we had a few rubber/plastic rats purchased at a 90% off sale after Halloween that they threw as far as they could. My hubby built a small "rat-a-polt" inspired by a local ren fair event.

All of the food on the buffet table had funny names. I had a bowl of peeled grapes (wombat spleens) , spaghetti with meatballs (also known as guts and gizzards) and the veggie tray (corpses of snarky plants).

The cake was a choclate cake cubed up trifle style with choclate pudding and gummy worms with a gummy rat on top.

We used the fake spider webbing from the aforementioned Halloween sale. We covered a few things in burlap.

We did an Ogre Swamp Magic show. I had grated up a whole head of red cabbage and stewed it with water to extract the natural purple dye of the cabbage, which just happens to be a wonderful pH identifyer. I then strained out the pieces of cabbage and stored the juice in a clear pitcher in the garage to contain the stink.

On the day of the party we did this demonstration outside, I wore goggles and chemical gloves. Before the test begain I carried around the pitcher of swamp juice for the kids to smell. It was disgusting and the kids LOVED it. Each of the test materials was already in clear mason jars and then I poured on the "Swamp" juice (the red cabbage juice) and watched the colors shift and change. It is very quick and quite dramatic.

Here is a good link to learn more, this is in the sense of a science experiment but it is not difficult to change this up for a party setting.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/acidsbase1/a/red-cabbage-ph-indicator.htm

In all it was a fantastic day, very inexpensive compared to some party supplies, and unique. At the end each child got a sash (More burlap decorated with a glue/glitter award) So, there was a Messiest Ogre, Loudest Ogre, Stinkiest Ogre, Silliet Ogre, Strongest Ogre, Slimiest Ogre, Scariest Ogre, Most Gluttenous Ogre, Belchiest Ogre, Fart-ing-est Ogre and then there was Birthday Ogre. I made as many sashes as kids who RSVP'd and then a couple more for "just in case."

I did not purchase any actual "Shrek" merchandise, but just used cheap green supplies, dug out old dirty stuff from the garage and barn, and then Shrek inspired activities. Generally I just let my son revel in gross stuff for an entire day, he was thrilled.

 

[Jennyvelaz]

Seven is young, I did 8 as a sleepover. The theme was Campout. I gave out each a small crate from the $$ store, filled with fake bugs, reading light clipped to it, candy worms, that bucket of microwave popcorn, and a box of skittles (son's fav). I Cricutted each name on the front with a hobo stick and the cake was pull-apart cupcakes from Walmart with the camp theme. I had them add a pool on it. Each crate included a $1 nerf sword and they ended up playing manhunt and swords for hours. Hope you have a great time!

 

[mjkacmom]

Are these close friends? There is no way I'd let my 7 year olds (turning 8 this year) go to a sleepover for just a classmate's party. Slumber parties here start in the 3rd/4th grade.

 

[Sunik35]

Are these close friends? There is no way I'd let my 7 year olds (turning 8 this year) go to a sleepover for just a classmate's party. Slumber parties here start in the 3rd/4th grade.

Yes-Close friends since Kindergarten. We have celebrated a few sleepovers already with this group of friends.

 

[Swimalie]

Is your son in to Star Wars? If so, a Star Wars party could be it. Recently we've done pirates (gave each child a patch and bandana, did a treasure hunt, etc) and food theme (we went to Disney so it was a low key party but we had our moon bounce out and all the favors were food related).

Now when my son turns 6 he wants Star Wars. I'll be making robes for all the young padowans and they will go through testing before getting their light sabers (pool noodles made up to look like light sabers) and graduating to Jedi. For a sleep over, you could show an episode of the Clone Wars for the finale.

 

[5 Disney Fans]

How about a game show theme? If you have a Wii or PS you can rent some game show games like Family Feud. Have the boys play that as they arrive. Then for real life activities you can do "Minute to Win It", Card Sharks, Fear Factor, Let's Make a Deal etc... And for a wind down activitiy you can play shows that you pre-recorded. You can also have a table with "fabulous prizes". The tricky part will just be making sure everyone wins a prize and if they all do you don't need to do goodie bags

 

[KTSMOM]

For my DD's 8th b'day party we did a scavenger hunt. We hid some candy in a pinata and made up a story about how our dog had taken the candy and we had to find out where she left it. The kids would play a game (such as who am I and simon says) and the winners would be able to read the clue that would take them to the next game/card until they reached a pinata. I also had small gifts at each of the games, such as magnifying glasses, pens and pads of paper to write on, etc..detective type gifts. Before they started the game I had them each make their own briefcase out of folders and pipecleaners. We just stapled them and they would color/design them for themselves and this allowed them to have a bag to hold all their goodies in. I also picked out A-Z mystery books and let them pick out one at the end of the game. We had a great time and it was a huge hit. (by the way I did all of this at my house).

Last year when she turned 9 we did a Cake Bake off party. It was a sleepover so there were only 6 kids, but it was 2 teams of 3. I made a variety of different shaped cakes, but made sure that both teams were equal in what they got. I bought frosting, candies and the like and the 2 teams decorated the cakes. I had a friend judge the cakes and the winner was the cake that the candle went it. That was a lot of fun too!

 

[wgwtgb]

We just had our kids combined b-day last month. One turned 11 and the other 7. We had a pirate themed party. Not The Disney Pirates. We had a treasure box Pinata and a treasure hunt. And the other kids did a scavenger hunt. The kids loved it and it was allot of fun. Allot of the party supply stores carry the pirate themes.

Got many things and was able to make many in-expensive things for this theme...party was great!

 

[StitchBuddy]

We have a neighbor that has always rented a bounce house for her kids birthdays. She does this from the age of 5 until they turn 13. The kids love it. Depending on the weather, they also have water-balloon fights. She lets them bounce until 11 or 12 then brings them in and has them go to bed. They go to sleep quickly and when they wake up, out to the bounce house they go until parents pick them up. My daughter always looked forward to those parties.