Boys

Youngsters from 4-8 typically love dinosaurs and will enjoy learning about what real paleontologists do. 

Set Up: You’ll need to get lots of plastic dinosaurs. If you’d like to make it an educational party, you should read up on the names of some of the most common creatures, and be ready to give a little lesson on them. Before the party you should bury several dinos in a sandbox or wading pool filled with dirt. Hide enough that each guest will be able to find 3 or 4. You’ll also want to provide some large spoons or small shovels to dig with.  

This is a great party for warm days and provides a lot of entertainment for school aged kids.

Set Up: You will obviously need a collection of squirt guns, balloons and a way to fill them with water. You should set up targets at one end of the yard. Some can be made of colored construction paper that will change color as soon as they get wet so kids can tell if they hit the target. Others can be made of tissue paper stretched over the open end of a box, with the object being to squirt enough water on it to break through the paper. Targets for the water balloons can be buckets or barrels, or holes in containers to aim the balloons at. You should also put marks of some kind at different distances away from the target to offer more challenges. 

Kids from about 3-6 love cowboys and horses and will enjoy this party. They’ll get a chance to stretch their imaginations and pretend to be riding the range. 

Set Up: You will need to gather as many stick horses as you can. If you can’t find enough store-bought ones, a yardstick with a mop head fastened on the end will satisfy most imaginative pre-schoolers. If you can build an actual campfire at your party spot…great.

This party is a pirate party, each child gets to make up some cool pirate name and wear pirate hats and eye patches. Give each pirate a list of booty that they must give, with the final score under the spot X marks. Each child will be given clues on what the next item is hidden and must go through many missions until one child has scored the X. Make the booty something they can keep, also buy a compact disc with cool pirate music and a cake that says something with a pirate twist to it.