Indoor entertainment for hoardes of 2nd graders?

[madteaparty]

For the first time in her life, DD’s bday party will be rained out it looks like. We have rented a massive bounce house and anyway it will be too cold to use it even a slip n slide ? 

Any suggestions for indoor stuff? I’m really bad at playing with or entertaining little kids. I also wanted this to be sort of special for her; we’ve been away and she’s really missed her class, and we go away again next week. Any ideas welcome! Thank you!

 

[rose]

How about the old classics like a pinata (please forgive the missing accent--it makes me sick to look at) or pin the tail on the donkey or musical chairs?

[madteaparty]

Ooh. Musical chairs! Yes, thank you. 

i don’t  know about piñata indoors, could get violent ?

[ryes_silver]

Both are great suggestions. Ever watched that show called 'Minute to Win it'; you can get so many ideas from the minigames there. From the top of my head, try something like stacking the cups or walking through a maze full of cups blindfolded or passing the message sort of game. All of these require a lot of teamwork and can engage the whole community

[Garga]

Do you have a bunch of Easter eggs?  One year, my sons went on a bunch of Easter egg hunts and brought home over 200 eggs.  A couple of weeks later, my youngest had a birthday.  Instead of party favors, I filled the eggs with candy and let the kids go on an Birthday egg hunt and take whatever they found home with them.

If you don’t already have eggs, it might be hard to find them.  

Oh wait! I just remembered!  Another year, after I was out of eggs, I bought little fuzzy chicks from oriental trading company and hid them all over the house.  The kids could keep the chicks.  The kids who found the most (1nd, 2nd, 3rd) got prizes. (These chicks: http://www.orientaltrading.com/yellow-baby-chicks-a2-48_8750.fltr?keyword=Baby+chicks .  The prices seem higher than when I bought them.)

So, any kind of hunt can work: eggs, chicks.  I think we might have done spider rings near Halloween one year?  Or maybe that was at a friend’s party.  Anyway—anything little and cheap that you can hide works.  Maybe fuzzy pom poms?  

[Frances]

I think musical chair and the object hunt or a scavenger hunt are great ideas. If you also want a quieter activity with something to take home, at that age my son and his friends, both boys and girls, would spend hours working with the tiny colored melting beads where you make a design on a template and then iron it to melt the beads and finish the project. You can buy a big bucket of the beads relatively cheaply.

[Katy]

If you're not against toy guns a fun idea we recently attended was a nerf party.  They got the smallest/cheapest nerf guns they could find as "favors", and used them in a massive nerf war.  The kids created more and more complicated rules and home bases as they played.

Another cheap indoor party around here is something area gymnastics places do - the kinds of places with kid "ninja" classes. They have tumbling and a zipline and fancy foam pits and trampolines.  The kids have a blast, burn off tons of energy for an hour or two, then they open presents, get sugared up on ice cream, cake, and punch, and go home.

[Annie G]

There’s a fun party game where you make a huge ball of multiple layers of plastic wrap with little prizes inside the layers. You start with the main prize and wrap it in a bunch of layers. Then periodically you add a prize like a dollar or something small until you have a large ball. The kids sit in a circle and it[s kind of like musical chairs where you play music and the person holding the ball unwraps as fast as they can to try to get to a prize. When the music stops they have to pass it to the next person. It helps to have music the kids love and encourage singing along. 

 

[madteaparty]

2 hours ago, happysmileylady said:

Your name is mad tea party-you could do a tea party.  Maybe have them decorate their own cookies, make some table centerpieces, you could get fancy disposable plates and tableware etc. 

You could play twister and/or other board games. 

Game of telephone is always fun.  

If you have the money you could just take the party somewhere, like McDs or the Movie theater, skating rink, indoor pool, etc etc. Those types of parties can be expensive sometimes.  

My DD is not the tea party type ?

I would take it to an indoor place but it's in 3 days. It's not going to happen ?

[almondbutterandjelly]

Four corners

One potato, two potato

Simon says

Charades

Pictionary

[unsinkable]

Bingo. You can get disposable bingo papers and a deck of bingo cards at party city-type places. 

Then, you can use the daubers to do dot art.

Win-win-win!