Little people don’t really understand proper games - some of the usual party games will entertain them but they don’t really understand winning… and certainly don’t like losing!! Here are a couple of games that will keep them entertained and happy:

Tight Rope Walker (ages 2-8)

Put a long piece of string or tape on the floor and have the children pretend to tightrop walk along it - show them how first then let them have a go - make it funnier by adding instructions and or silly props - give them an umbrella, a bunch of flowers or tell them to hop and jump!

Leaping Frogs (age 18m+)

Cut out several Lily leaves from green paper, fabric or even newspaper, lay them on the floor and have the children hop about like frogs in between. When the music stops, each child must find a lily pad. There is no need with very young children to take away a pad each time but older children find the competition fun if you do. For younger children there need not be a winner though they enjoy it if you tell them who made it to the lily pad first each time. ( You can theme this if you like - your children can be monsters stomping to their rocks, butterflies landing on flowers, fairies flitting to toadstools etc etc)

Magic Wands (ages 2-6)

Wave a magic wand at the children and tell them “Abracadabra, you’re all lions!” - each child then acts the part - you can have all the children be the same animal together or pick them individual ones until you’re surrounded by a whole farmyard of noises! Be careful not to upset anyone by giving them horrid animals that they won’t like (…you know your little guests best!!). Make your boys into mucky pigs rolling in the mud and your girls into pretty kittens.

 Follow the leader (age 18m+)

Start marching and get the children to copy your every move. Do silly walking, jumps and dances around the room. Sit down, sneeze, do star jumps - guaranteed to get them laughing.

Blowing up a balloon (ages 2-7)

The children hold hands in a tight circle. Everyone blows and the circle gets bigger like a balloon. When the leader says pop, all the children sit down. You can make this last longer by letting some air out and making the circle smaller again. if you have enough children, make long thin balloons too - this means they’ll start off closely facing a friend increasing the giggle factor.

Zoo Animals

An animal version of Charades - the children sit in a circle to make a cage. Each child stands in the cage in turn and acts out an animal while the others guess what they’re trying to be. You can decide whether they should be allowed to make noises or not depending on your guests ages - perhaps older children must be quiet - younger children can make noise.

Find the balloon

Draw a face on a balloon and hide it while all the children close their eyes. Have them all try to find it. Any object can be substitued; things like ticking clocks might make seeking easier - though the children will have to be quiet to find it!

Snowball Fight! (age 3+)

With much animation, tell the children that it is snowing (inside!!) and act out making and throwing snowballs. They’ll take it up immediately - remember how cold and wet it feels down the back of your neck and mimic this. Make sound effects when you hit or miss and act as if you get hit - sometimes from behind! (my little boy plays this in the supermarket, much to the amusement of other shoppers, grabbing imaginary snow from the shelves as he goes by in the trolley.)

Apple Bobbing
A large bowl of water is placed on the floor (a baby bath is ideal for this if you have one). Without using their hands, they have to try and lift an apple out of the water using their teeth. Children can wear aprons if you have them and spread plenty of newspaper over the floor as this can get quite messy!

Dangling Doughnuts
Tie some doughnuts with holes in the centre using a length of elastic or string and hang them from a pole in a row. Without using their hands AND without licking their lips, the children must munch through their doughnut. The first to eat the whole doughnut is the winner. You can add raspberry syrup for blood but be warned, this makes it a great deal messier!

Witches’ Cauldron
Fill a bowl or ‘cauldron’ with items that represent different body parts. Put things like peeled grapes in the box and pretend they are feeling eyeballs, linked sausages for intestines, cauliflower for brains, a balloon filled with water for a heart, liquorice laces for veins or jelly for liver.

Get the children to sit blindfolded in a circle and take it in turns to pull out each item and guess what it is.

Pumpkin Lanterns
To create a true Halloween atmosphere you really need a pumpkin lantern, put it near a window or outside your front door or have it as centre piece on your table. They are easy to make and pumpkins are cheap and plentiful at this time of year.

Using a sharp knife, cut a thick slice off the top of a fairly large pumpkin. Reserve the top for the lid.

Scoop out the seeds using a spoon and discard them along with any fibrous threads. Carefully cut and spoon out the pumpkin flesh leaving about 2cm flesh all the way round. You can keep the flesh you remove to make recipes like pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie.

Using a pencil or felt pen, mark out the facial features on the front of the pumpkin. Then cut around the lines using a small pointed knife, cutting away small sections at a time.

Place a night light inside the pumpkin. Light the candle and place the lid on top. You can get fake nightlights these days in supermarkets or florists which flicker realistically but are much safer.

Mummy Wrap
Take your party and divide them into partners. You will need a lot of toilet paper. One person will be the mummy, and the other will be the wrapper. The object of the game is for the wrapper to cover toilet paper around his or her mummy, including their arms which are held out. The winner is the first person to be wrapped like a mummy in toilet paper.

Pumpkin bowling
You will need: oranges, plastic bottles of water.
Draw pumpkin faces onto the oranges and substitute your living room for the local bowling alley. Use the bottles of water in them as pins and replace the ball with the oranges and try to get a strike!

Graveyard game
Choose one person to be the grave keeper. The grave keeper closes his/her eyes and counts to ten while everyone else gets into a good frozen position and stands very still. The grave keeper then walks around looking for anyone who moves. If the grave keeper catches you moving (breathing doesn’t count), you are out. You can move positions when the gravekeeper’s back is turned but don’t get caught moving. The last person left is the winner and can be the new grave keeper if you choose to play another round.

Hire a face painter for the night…

Place cut out shapes of teddy bears/monsters/faries etc of paper on the floor in a circle. Children walk around circle while listening to music. If the music is loud the children move fast. If the music is quiet the children move slowly. If the music stops, the children stop on the closest shape. Young children like to play it this way. To make it more interesting for older children have one less shape than the number of children. Continue remove shapes as the children are ‘out’.

Get a large piece of card and draw a picture (as large as you can) of whatever corresponds with your theme (or something that appeals to your child) - dalek, monsters, fairy, dinosaur, pirate etc - Next make a “tail” to pin on it. For a monster make a warty nose, for a fairy make wings or a wand, for daleks use a stun gun, make a dinosaur horn, a pirates’ wooden leg - or his eye patch.  Specify exactly where it should go with a dot to avoid dispute later.

Blindfold your guests - spinning them around three times if you like. Hand them the tail and ask them to stick it in the most appropriate place. Use blu tac to stick your “tail” to the page and a felt tip pen to make a note of where each party guest places it. Initial each attempt. The closest to the spot wins.

Egyptian Mummy Wrap
Divide the kids into pairs, with one the Mummy and the other the Mummy Wrapper. Give each wrapper a roll of toilet paper or crepe paper streamer. On the word “Go!” have the wrappers race to see who can wrap up their mummy first. The game is tricky because the faster they try to wrap, the more the tissue will tear, causing them to keep restarting!

Balloon Keepy-Up

See who can keep a balloon off the floor for the longest time by bouncing it off various body parts. Can be played individually or in teams -invent as many rules to make it easier or harder depending on your guests. Try scoring inventiveness or insist only knees or only heads etc

Balloon relay

Divide guests into teams. Make up your own rules to pass a balloon along a row of people - pass under the legs, through your shirt, from one chin to the next, using no hands etc and the team who gets the baloon to the end of the row first wins. If you want to make it longer, add an “it’s a knockout” style race around a chair at the end of the room before the team wins. It raises the excitement to have to dash to win.

Little girls love fairies. These instructions will be useful if you’ve got a fancy dress party to go to , bored children to entertain at home or as a party idea.

Rather than ask your party guests to dress as fairies, suggest they make their own wings instead. Because of the hands-on feature of this idea you may want to invite fewer guests - also, it may work better for slightly older children.

Set up tables in the garden and be prepared for mess. Suggest the guests wear old T-shirts rather than party dresses. Get  supplies:

• Bright colourful tights (large)
• Wire (5-8 feet of steel wire per pair of wings depending on the size of your fairy)
• Glittery fabric paint/jewels/feathers/flowers/3d fabric paint/trailing ivy leaves/big sequins/ribbons/fabric etc etc
• Duct tape
• Coloured Elastic for holding the wings onto the fairy (or if the straps must be invisible try looking for clear bra straps in the shops)
• Wire snips
• Strong pliers, especially if you want to bend your wings into funky wing shapes
• Needle & thread

Shape the wire into a figure 8. Next, secure the middle with duct tape and trim off any sharp ends. If you’re making very fancy wings try leaving some extra for making into a spiral underneath. Remember to cover the ends so that you don’t get spiked! If your wire is flexible enough, bend the ends into a loop.

If you’ve put spirals onto your wings you’ll need to wrap them in ribbon or a long tube of coloured fabric. (You may want to use the leftover parts of the tights if there’s enough.

Using just the legs of the tights (cut off the tops), stretch them over each wing pulling them tight and securing at the bottom. If you’ve made your wings into a complicated shape you’ll need to sew the tights at strategic places around the wire. Secure the ends if need be with duct tape to hold them in place.

Use more tape to hold the straps on - make them long enough to be comfortable but short enough that the wings won’t sag. The tape will need to be covered now; use a loop of fabric, paint it, wrap it in ribbon or cover it with a large flower.

Don’t forget to get a good combination of colours - Gothic fairy wings look great when made from black tights, then use a combination of black and gray or lace to decorate.

Depending on how creative you feel (and how much free time you can set aside) you may decide to make the wings in advance of your little guests arriving - whereas if you have the patience you may be happy to supervise them through the making process. If you’re a real angel perhaps you’ll have them sleep over and wear them (allowing for plenty of drying time) in the morning!

Alternatively try these sites to buy professionally made wings: Off With The Faries or Fairy Love!

A good game for keeping children quiet for a short while.

Player 1 makes up a sentence and whispers it very quietly into the ear of Player 2. Player 2 repeats it, exactly as he heard it to Player 3 and so on. The last player says the sentence out loud. It’s usually very different from the original (try not to do this part just as the best man finishes his speech as it is usually accompanied by loud laughter!)

Here is a list of children’s party games that you’ve no doubt heard of but may have forgotten about:

Pin the tail on the donkey: pin a “tail” on any suitable picture - also try tails on rabbits (easter), handbags on princesses, wings on a fairy, horn/eye on the monster, patch on the pirate (try painting a really gruesome eye underneath - little boys love that sort of thing)

Apple Bobbing: Traditionally for halloween - either fill a bucket with water and pop apples in the top or tie the apples to string and hang them. Each guest has to try to eat the apples without hands. When combining with face painting, we recommend the hanging version!

Pass the parcel: Wrap a gift in multiple layers and pass around to music - when the music stops, remove a layer. Some layers may include a special tiny gift or packet of sweeties or try adding a forfeit. One hen party we organised had funny rhymes for the guests to read out (we decided girls aren’t good at forfeits because they tend to let each other off!)

Musical chairs: Run around the chairs until the music stops then grab a chair. Ensure one fewer chairs than players. Anyone who doesn’t get a chair is out. Each round remove a chair.

Musical statues: Dance madly to the music but when it stops, freeze in any position. Anyone who moves is out. You can speed this game up by allowing more than one ”loser” per round. Minimise tears by giving a sweetie to each child when withdrawn from the game.

Sleeping Dogs/Dead Lions: If they’re getting a bit noisy try this one… Get them all to play dead - anyone who moves or giggles is out. Try matching this to the party theme - call it Extinct dinosaurs… Sleeping beauty…

Blind man’s buff: Use a blindfold on one player who has to identify the other players by touch alone - everyone should stay quiet but hints may be given if it’s deemed necessary.

Spin the bottle: For young teens/older children. Sitting in a ring, the girls and boys each spin a bottle positioned in the centre to determine who they kiss. Sure to raise shrieks and giggles. Parents are not allowed to watch (at least don’t let them see you watching!!)

Wink murder: The detective leaves the room and a murderer is selected. When winked at by the murderer each player must fall to the floor (the louder/more dramatic the theatrics the better). The detective has to determine who the murderer is before everyone else is dead!

Sardines: Hide and seek but begins with one hider while everyone else tries to find them. Once they discover the hiding place, each seeker gets in too until only one seeker is left - it does get a bit squashed hence the name.

Gloves & chocolate: a pile of silly gloves, scarves, hats is positioned in the centre of the room next to a large bar of chocolate and a knife and fork. When someone “throws a 6″ they get to leap up, put on the hats, gloves and scarves and attempt to break of a chunk of chocolate using the knife and fork before the next 6 is thrown. If you haven’t got your chocolate before the next person comes up, you don’t get any. Can be themed depending on your party or simply use Dad’s old stuff - especially with gloves, they’re supposed to be too big!