Fun games that have children laughing and learning!

by Fallon
(Virginia Beach, VA)

I recently hosted a birthday party for preschoolers that had them laughing and learning at the same time!

I based the activities on popular games that children play, so that all felt included-even the parents could get in on the fun. These activities will never go out of style and offered a lot of fun without having to spend a lot of money.

We opened the party with a game of hokey pokey to get everyone into a fun mood. Then we played a hide and seek game where I hid bean bag shapes around the room and the children had to find them and return them to the basket.

We also did a fun freeze dance game with shapes. I placed cut-out shapes on the floor and had the children dance to music, when the music stopped, each child stood on a shape. I would call out the shape and whoever was on the particular shape would jump up and down.

Another fun game that the children enjoyed was hot potato. We used a simple playground ball for this activity. We did a warm-up with passing the ball around the circle since children of this age group take just a little bit of time to get passing down.

I wanted to make sure that all of the children were happy during the party, so instead of having the one child left with the potato called out, we all clapped for the child and sent him or her to play on the play set.

Also, I did not make a big deal about any child being the winner of any game so that all the children just focused on having a good time.

You can easily adapt these games for a particular theme. For example, for a little girl who is into princesses, you can pass a tiara for hot potato, and for a boy who is into Pokemon, you can print out pictures of Pokemon and tape them to bean bags for hide and seek-you could even call the game "gotta catch ‘em all," just like the Pokemon slogan.

The most important part about hosting a party for preschoolers is to make sure that their energy is directed toward an activity-it leaves both parents and children with smiles on their faces.