I am not a fan of class parties. It’s so much easier to do a small friends and family party - less stress, cost, planning, less everything! But a certain kindergartener watched all the other children get big parties and was insistent that he wanted one too.
Our class hasn’t been very good at sharing contact information, so the only way to invite anyone is to invite the entire class by sending invites to school. It’s actually helpful that the teachers agree to distribute invites in the folders that go home every night, but it was a lot of control to give up for me. Even worse was when I set an RSVP deadline and had at least 6 kids RSVP after that time. I’m not sure what was worse, the stress of waiting for them to come in, or the kindergartener constantly asking who was coming.
I had no idea what to expect - would we get 3 kids or 13? The party was out of town, so I wondered if that meant less people would come. Maybe I hoped it would mean less people would come? It was a funny line where I didn’t want no one to show up but I also didn’t want everyone.
In the end we had 11 out of 16 of E’s classmates show up, plus my friend’s 2 children and our 3 made 16 kids at the party. Add in that almost all the kindergarten parents dropped and ran, it made for a hectic but exciting party.
I went through a lot of ideas that I thought E might enjoy - painting pottery (but then I’d have to return and pick up the pottery 2 weeks later and had no idea how I’d distribute it to the kids), a baking class where they could make their own cupcakes (but that was even further out of town and had a cap of 10 kids). I really didn’t want to do the jumphouse type parties that so many kids do. I’ve been to them, they’re crazy and I wasn’t ready for it.
So I ended up finding a movie theater that was set up to host birthdays. It has small theaters that fit 50-60 people (so big enough to be cool that we have the whole thing to ourselves) and have a party platform in the back that has table and chairs for the kids.
E had asked for a superhero party with his classmates, and a unicorn party at home. For the superhero party I got felt masks for all the kids to take home and some superhero tattoos that we did there. That part started out pretty cute, but ended with kids who figured out how to put them on themselves and walked out of the party with full arm sleeves of tattoos and a bunch had them all over their face too. Hopefully their parents are as okay temporary tattoos as we are!
We watched the movie Superpets to go along with the theme, which was cute and appropriate enough for all the littles. We started the party with pizza, gave them popcorn and punch during the movie, and ended with cupcakes and an ice cream sundae bar. When in doubt, FEED THEM!
E was so excited to be the first for everything - first to pick his mask, first to get served food, first to pick his ice cream topics. I pulled him aside during cupcakes and asked if he wanted everyone to sing to him or not. I honestly wasn’t sure what he’d pick, but he said yes, and the whole class sang Happy Birthday.
It honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and it was awesome to see how happy E was. Even G and F had the best time running around and being part of things too.
Then we got to celebrate all over again at home with rainbows and unicorns and my favorite part - homemade cake. Where I try to prove my love to my children through shaping cake mix and frosting.
