Looking for Game/craft Ideas for an 8Yr Old Girl's Birthday Swim Party

For crafts, you can go on Oriental Trading Company's website, www.orientaltrading.com, and take a look. They have a lot of crafts that are inexpensive.

Have fun,
C.

Hi S., I make origami baskets (you can find out how on the internet or email me separately and I can instruct you). They are fun and a little challenging the first time making them but my daugther, who works at an after school program made them as a group project, and it was a hit. I used them in parties for my kids. First they choose a piece of wallpaper from an old wallpaper sample book. Then they make the basket. Then you can be creative as to how the fill the basket and what they fill it with. If it is a theme party, go with answering trivia questions on the theme for a "prize". Also fun to do a scavenger hunt in house or yard to fill. Great thing about this is it is a craft activity and also a game. Have loads of fun! I used to love planning and having parties for my kids' BD! Happy summer 2 U! :o)

Foam crafts are fun, especially with the pool theme. Make or embellish your own flip flops.

Noodle races (pool noodles), toss sinkable treasures on the bottom and send everyone down to fetch them. They must pick up one object, return it to their own bucket, and dive again. I put the strong swimmers buckets farther away from the majority of the prizes to give the less experienced swimmers a fighting chance. Once, I gave each girl a sand pail to decorate and said find a place to hide this for a game later. They had to leave the buckets in those places for the game...find a treasure, get out of pool, go behind the gazebo, and back to pool. It was kind of funny. I did encourage the less experienced swimmers to put it closer to the pool.

At a recent swim party, the dad held up hula hoops and the kids dove through them. I didn't think my daughter would do this as she was not diving yet, but she got in line, watched the other girls dive, and then when her turn came up, she slipped right through the hoop.

Have fun!
S

I don't know if you are opposed to the whole make up, dress up thing but my friend had 4 stations. One station was for Hair and they did cute hairstyles with, cute barrets etc. The next station was a make-up station, they had a nail station and a dress up station with just Boa's and hats and grown up shoes and they took "Glamor" Shots. It was soo cute and then they ate Hot Dogs, Fruit Salad and chips!! The adults manned the stations and the girls were soo excited. They also received a gift bag at the end with Lip Gloss and Bracelets that she got from Party city and the dollar store.

Hi S., Everytime I go to Michaels Crafts I'm amazed at the things they have. Since it's a swim party, decorating sun visors or flip flops might fit right in. I've seen that kind of stuff there before. Maybe play dough or lego boat contest? Wind up swimming critter contests? At Costco you can buy sherbets in "beachy" containers (coconut shells, etc). If you have lots of help to watch everyone in the water, or a small party group you can monitor yourself, you might try a water game - we love volleyball with an inflatable ball or throwing a water frisbee to each other - have some sort of contest?

Been there, done that! Many times over. Some of the games my daughters have enjoyed at "pool parties" have been: swim races (goofy strokes as well as real ones), rubber duck races, finding 'treasure' on the bottom of the pool, underwater cameras (one has a camera and all make faces or pose underwater for photos~~another parent can run the camera to a one-hour developing place and bring back the photos for a contest).
Crafts: making costumes out of scraps for rubber ducks, picture frames with pool-type stickers (to put that priceless photo of the birthday girl with her friend in)~a polaroid camera works great for this, pinatas with pool toys instead of or in addition to candy....

Hope this helps a bit! My middle daughter STILL at 17 has a pool party for her birthday!

My friend told me about this craft web site and its loaded with many ideas for all ages so I hope this helps.
Go to www.bfcraftclub.com and you can google it too.
Once you find the site you can click by category or all projects. Good luck and have fun at the party.

When my daughter was that age we went to theme parties

1. Barbie Birthday Party. Everyone brought their Barbies and dressed up like Barbies. The girls decorated wands, crowns, jewlery so they can become Barbie Princesses.

2. Nickelodon Party. This was fun and messy. The girls had to answer questions and if they got it wrong, they were either slimed with the green goop (applesauce with green food coloring), spaghetti noodles or chocolate sauce poured on their heads, whip cream pie in the face. We had shower caps for those girls who could not get the goop in their hair. All the girls wore their swimsuits and we rinsed them off before they jump into the pool.