can you give me some toddler party help?

If you have enough room at your house, you can keep 'em busy with organized games and activities before and after the birthday child opens his gifts and the ice cream and cake is served. Try this schedule, for example:

1. Upon arrival, they can each make their own party hats. Pre-make inexpensive cone-shaped hats with construction paper with strings on each side to tie under their chins after they've created their own colorful hats. Have a "station" for each child at the kitchen table, and supply glitter, feathers, confetti, glue, magic-markers, etc. with which the children can create their hats.

2. After they have thier party hats on, then you can play good old fashioned musical chairs. After a few rounds of that, it's a good time for the birthday boy to open his gifts.

3. Next, let the kids blow off some steam again with a treasure hunt outdoors. You could put a few trinkets in small boxes - one for each child (complete with the child's name on it so that everyone ends up with one "treasure"). Hide the treasure boxes around your yard before the guests arrive.

After they've each found their treasures, it's time for cake and ice cream. After that, you're probably exhausted, and the kids are on the edge of getting cranky - so it's probably a good time to send 'em home!

Another suggestion you could use (to replace or add to the activities I've mentioned) is to clear the kitchen table and ask the kids to stand around it. Then, take a whole can of gel shaving cream and

squirt it all over the table! Then, show the kids that if you smooth it out, you can draw on the table with your finger. I did this one time very spontaniously, and the kids LOVED it...they played for almost two hours with the stuff! It's easy to clean up afterwards, too. You must use GEL...it lasts much longer than regular shaving creme.

Hope this helps!

If you have a big yard or can go to the park, have a treasure hunt party, can have a side "pirate theme" or something similar. Kind of like a national treasure idea. Hide things for them to find and make keys for them to follow, kinda like an updated easter egg hunt, and you can hide those chocolate gold coins or little knick knacks you can pick up at the dollar store.

Costume parties are always fun, pick superheroes or favorite disney movies or some thing that the older kids can enjoy since they will get to dress up for it. Pick something that you can decorate easily for and then tell them to dress accordingly. Make it fun and economical by telling them they have to use items found at home to dress up in and have a best costume contest.

I love luau parties, SOOO easy to decorate for and plenty of games the kids can play (hula hoops, limbo, throw the leis around someone elses head, "walk on the hot coals", decorate a surf board- can give you easy instructions if needed, all you need is a few poster boards, markers, paint, hawaiian sayings, etc.-, all kinds of ideas all over the internet and all the luau stuff is starting to show up at dollar store and is on sale in most party supply places now. My 10 year old loved the luau theme and the boys that came thought it was really cool.

The older boys might also like a bowling party if you have a local bowling alley that can discount for a b-day party to keep it economical for you. I even think bumper bowling is cool for the boys, they can play hit the bumpers so many times before hitting the pins and that will keep them busy for hours!

There is even a few websites I found with other ideas:

http://www.boysbirthdaypartyplanner.com/index.html

http://www.outoftheboxparty.com/Birthday_Party_Box...

Good luck!

Some hotels and restaurants have special events for a child's party, they even bring in Cartoon Characters, check it out on line. A Pirates theme party should be nice for a seven years old.