Favorite Birthday Party Games

Through the years we have had many birthday parties for my boys. Their first parties were in the preschool years and we tried to stick to the rule of inviting the number of children according to your child's age, plus one. A five year old in our family would have six guests, and so on. This was a manageable amount for me in addition to the three children in our family. There are many fun and easy prepared party games which we have played including both toss-across and twister. Our favorite birthday party games are those we make up ourselves, homemade fun is the best.

1. Soda Bottle Bowling - This may be played as six, eight or ten pins. Peel of the labels, rinse out empty two liter soda bottles and fill with water, color the water with bright food coloring and recap. The colors add to the party atmoshpere and the water makes the pins more challenging to knock over. Bowl using a backyard "kickball."

2. Bean Bag Toss - A large cardboard box which you paint and decorate and cut circles out of for the bean bags to be tossed into. We have turned cardboard boxes into clown faces, haunted houses, priate ships, barnyards, baseball diamonds and have also just painted fun shapes, stars, rockets, or dinosaurs on them. They can also be decopaged using shapes from birthday party wrapping paper.

3. Races - We have played many birthday racing games. The old fashioned potato sacks are still available, three legged races work out well also. Soccer races are usually a hit at the birthday parties. We line up two rows of soccer cones and in pairs the kids race each other while dribbling the soccer ball down the yard and around the cones to the finish. Egg races are fun, we use hard boiled eggs, each child lines up in a row and with a spoon balances their eggs and races to the opposite side of the yard without dropping their egg.