Birthday Party Ideas - Wrightstown, NJ

This is the best age for easy and free birthday games!! Ring around the rosy, duck duck goose, follow the leader...anything that requires movement and copying can be a game at that age!! Also let them color or play with playdo. They will have a blast!

How about freeze dance. You play music and all the kids dance and when you shut the volume the have to freeze.

If it's nice outside, play with chalk or paint on a driveway with water. I like the idea of Simon Says that some other moms have mentioned. My 2 yr old's favorite activity outside is blowing bubbles. You can buy packs of bubbles at the dollar store, and they also have monster-sized refills for when the kids dump their bottles.

I have a great one! Take a trash bag and spread it outside on the ground or a table. Take a bowl of water and dish soap. Place some water on the trash bag and the dish soap....(may want to practice to find the right combination), but you can actually blow bubbles with your hands! All you have to do is get your hands soapy and make a circle with your pointer and thumb fingers and blow! As long as you have the right combo it works and the kids will be thrilled!

Two year olds are a lot of fun, but hard to play games with. The good news is that it doesn't take much to amuse them.

You could try a version of musical chairs, where you turn on music and they dance but have to stop when the music stops. Up to you whether you think they will understand, or want to, sit out if they kept moving after the music stopped.

You could also do a craft of "my favorite things." If you have catalogues and magazines, you can cut out different things that the kids would like -- toys, flowers, airplanes, smiling faces, etc. Have enough for each child to choose a few. They can paste (glue sticks might be good) their favorite things onto a piece of construction paper to take home with them as a party favor.

You could also get a paint with water book from the Dollar Store and have them do that page as a craft.

You could have balloon volleyball. Get a regular balloon and blow it up yourself -- not helium. Have the kids bop it around the room and try to keep it off of the floor.

My mom gave me a good piece of advice when my kids were little. You need to have somewhere to go. In other words, you can't have huge, blowout parties every year. Those parties become the norm, and each year you will want to get bigger and "better" to top the last. Save the big parties for when the kids really want one, and the age suggests it's time. For example, 10th birthday (double digits), 13 (a new teenager), 16...you get the idea.

My mom also reminded me to keep the activities to the age; the point of the party is for the kids to have fun -- no need to impress the parents.

Good luck with the party. It will be fun if you have a little fun as well.

At the age of 2 I wouldn't worry about playing any games. At that age they won't understand the concept. I would wait until your son's third or fourth birthday before I wuld worry about that. All kids love to play outside, so I would suggest palying with toys in your yard or at the local park. Kids just love to play with other kids. Don't stress about entertaining them they'll entertain each other.

Hi! Here are a few ideas.

If the weather is nice you can do a treasure hunt with hints to where to look. Obviously, you would have to do real obvious, short hints and the parents would probably have to "hunt" with the kids. The treasure could be cookies or "gold"-fish.

My 2 year old loves to make a tent and go in and out. So, blanket over chairs, instant entertainment.

If you have some old 2 liter bottles or even baby bottles, you can set them up as bowling pins and roll a ball to knock them down. I would probably set up 2 or 3 different alleys so they don't have to wait too long to have a turn.

Decorating cookies/cupcakes takes 2 year olds forever and then they eat them! Frosting and sprinkles.

Hope you have fun!

Hi. You don't need to spend a lot of money b/c 2 year olds will have fun no matter what. Musical chairs is always a good game. You could also play Simon Says and even just have them dance to music. Good luck.

a table with pages from a coloring book and crayons and playing in back yard

Macaroni nceklaces are fun and cheap. Just get a bunch of raw noodles that are hollow, (differnt shapes) and string yarn through them. 2 year olds can do that and they can even color them with crayons or markers. Then they get to take them home as a party favor.
Good Luck.....

I think the best thing to entertain that age is crayos and chalk. My nephew is turning 1 next week and my sister-in-law found a recipe online to make crayon cupcakes. the directions are to pre heat oven to 200 deg. put mini cupcake papers in mini cupcake tin. break up several crayons in each secton of the tin. Put the tin in the oven until the crayons melt. once they are cool take them out of the tin and the children have cupcake shaped crayons to play with. f you put several different colors in each section the crayone will be marbled and there is no telling what color will come up next. You could go to any craft or party store and get a roll of white paper and cover the entire table with it and let the kids use their imagination!!!

My son is turning two next week and we also have very little money for it. If there's anything you need to buy, you can try a dollar store. I went to one near our house and got all the decorations and a few party favors including Sesame Street plates and napkins and two packs of cars for less than $20.

In the end, I wouldn't worry about the kids minding. Most two year olds are going to have a blast being together. When I was little, I was the oldest of 8 kids and we rarely had extra money for big parties, but each birthday we would all decorate the house with crepe paper and make birthday signs (try one letter on pages of printing paper and tape them together).

Good luck and good luck on your job search!

Wow, this is tough, since I have been in your shoes but, doable. You can play games with music like the chicken dance, hokey pokey, ring around the rosie. Make a pinata with a balloon and newspaper-then paint when dry. Instead of hanging it in the air, put in the middle of the floor. Ball rolling to another is another great activity. You can also get a lot of great inexpensive ideas on the net by googling or yahoo. As far as birthday cakes-make cupcakes at home, It'll be a sufficient amount for each child.

Best of luck,

Hi
I didn't have any organized activity until my daughter turned 5 so consider just letting them play. Keep in mind that at 2 they still don't always play with each other but in the same room. One idea would be to make cookies or cupcakes for them to frost/decorate. Make all of one color frosting and divide into paper cups and give each child a popcicle stick to use to frost their item. Some sprinkles are always fun too. You'll be sanitary by giving them each their own cup of frosting so if they lick, who cares? We did this in my daughter's preschool with 2-3 year olds many times. You could do this in lieu of a birthday cake too! Keep lots of baby wipes handy! Have fun and good luck. T. in Delaware
www.homemadegourmet.com/tuesday815101
To benefit Diamond Blackfan Anemia Foundation

My son is turning two next month and we are getting ready for his party. We got one of those giant balloons so that they could roll it all around on the floor between each other and I got a reem of printer paper (like $2) and some finger paints. You'll have to moniter that if you are paining in the house, but it is definatly an activity that they will play with for a ton of time. I know my son will "Share" with my husband and I and will let us paint on some corners while he does the middle. If you have the urge to buy a big table paper you could let all the kids paint on the same one and hang it up when their done.

Just some ideas :)

Children this age don't need games. They aren't ready for anything organized. Remove all the furniture from one room & put up a baby gate. Then fill it w/ ballons & just let them run around & play in there. My son was thrilled to see all the ballons. Also, bubbles are a huge hit. If you can afford to rent a bubble machine & just have it run. They will keep themselves entertained. MY son turned 2 in January & we had kids in a room & they played w/ toys. No one was bored. IU think they would have been sad if I had stopped them to play a game. Good luck. Enjoy!!!

With that age, I think they are a little young for games. I like the idea of a table with crayons, sidewalk chalk if you have some where to use it. I think i would gather up or borrow as many balls as you could find and just let them kick or throw them around.

If you get rained out you might want to have something like a bean bag toss ---balled up socks or actual sewed bean bags and toss them into a bucket or a decorated box. Just leave the opening really big so it's easy for them to get it in.

I think it's best to have some ideas planned but with 2 year olds you really just have to go with the flow and between cake and presents you might not need a lot of games.

HAve a wonderful time and don't forget the camera!

Hey T. -

Go with Simon says!! My 2 yr old (and 5 yr old) love it. Granted - my 2 yr old doesn't always follow directions - but he does pretty well. Do the various body parts (relatively easy for a 2 yr old) - Simon says touch your nose, etc.

Another option (if the weather is nice) Have them pick flowers (dandelions are everywhere right now) and have each child make a bouquet for their mommy. Hand out cheap prizes to the kids (stickers, cookie, etc)

Hope this helps!

I have used this website many many times.
www.birthdaypartyideas.com
It is full of great ideas that other moms have done and you type in any theme or age and up comes at least 10 or more ideas. I recently used it for my sons 7th b-day for Pokemon ideas.
good luck:}

My opinion...if money is tight dont stress about games...2 year olds only have about a 2 minute attention span (if that!) ;) Our son just turned 3 & I am a SAHM & we need to "budget" too...so I can relate. Maybe the good 'ole school yard games, like ring-around the rosy, duck-duck goose, drop the clothes pin in the bucket, etc- keep it simple- it will make your life easier (& on your pocket book, too!) When our son gets together with his soon to be 2 yr old twin cousins- they play those games & have a blast! Hope this helps!!

T., my son turned 2 last Sat. We have little money too, so I called the fire station a few blocks from our house and the fireman gave us all (6 little kids) a tour. They gave them fireman hats and let them sit in the trucks. It was a huge success and my son is still talking about it. It was free -- the best part.

Have fun! And, whatever you do, little 2 year old boys just like playing with anything that makes noise. He'll love it!

Hi T.,

I wouldn't fret over it. For two year olds, they are easily distracted and amused -- all the "extras" that you hear people do at parties for this age would be more for the adults to be charmed about while it's lost on the birthday child. Keep it simple. Offer cake and icecream. Preferably even home-baked, even with Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines boxed cakes. If you splurge on those decorator tubes sold by them, you can have fun personalizing it for him. What I do, after frosting the cake, use a toothpick and sketch out a simple drawing. Say a train or a dinosaur (kids are very forgiving and will be easily impressed) and the words Happy Birthday and his name. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, even buying sprinkles and sprinkling the entire cake and adding candles makes it very festive.
Then offer kids a safe area to play in with some fun toys and some music and your good to go. Doing any "themed" parties at this age, once again, gets completely lost on them and would be money wasted. At this age, they really aren't capable of doing a simple activity, you will only frustrate yourself when they "aren't listening". The only thing that matters is your mood, if you are excited and have fun with them, they will have fun too. Just give them loads of attention and you will all have a good time.
I wish your son a happy birthday and that you all have a great time! Enjoy!

K.

We just played a great game for my son's birthday party. Make an elephant out of an old bucket (cut a hole in the middle of the bottom. put an old grey sock on your arm and stick it through the hole. make ears out of grey felt and tape them on. Draw on elephant eyes with a marker.) Hide shelled peanuts (or packing peanuts if there are allergies) around and have the children look for peanuts to feed the hungry elephant. everyone wins and the kids were involved for at leat 45 min.!

I don't think you really need to structure any games. For my daughter's third Birthday, we had a lot of kids of various ages so we didn't plan any activities. We blew up a whole bunch of balloons for the kids to toss around, we bought some bubbles for them to blow, and we taped bubble wrap to the floor. The kids had a great time popping the bubble wrap, hitting the balloons back and forth, and blowing bubbles. It also didn't hurt that the majority of the stuff Ally got for presents were stuff all the kids could play with together. Her second birthday was also very low key. It was just her and one other kid. They played with Ally's toys, and helped make pizzas. We bought some ready made dough and the dads put sauce on them, and then Ally and her friend helped sprinkle on the cheese and put the pepperoni and green peppers on the pizza.

Stick with old standards. The attention span of a two year old is limited,so learning new games at a party can be overwhelming. Duck, Duck, Goose....red light, green light....kick the ball back and forth...things that are familiar are more fun for hem. Games at a party do not have to be "competitive" :) You can bake some cool cookies for take home treats and maybe visit your local dollar store to find some inexpensive bubbles and coloring pages. @ year olds aren't very picky and are more interested in being creative :)

k.

hello T.. i love childrens parties...they are so much fun. here are a few cheap ideas. olympics. relay race; hang a hoola hoop from a tree and have them squirt a squirt gun through the hoop before they can go on to the next event; put hoops or round objects on the ground and they must hop in each one; fill up a cup with water and carry it to the bucket on the other side and dump it in the bucket; make a pix with sidewalk chalk. could give you many more stupid ideas but the children love it. you do this as a sort of obsticle course. hope this helps.

Check out www.birthdaypartyideas.com

They have great suggestions! Good Luck!

At my son's second birthday party we did make your own cupcakes which was a great 10-15 minute activity. Each kid had an uniced cupcake (actually I had made cupcakes in the shape of trains using a little train pan i had). Then i bought some squirt on icing, writing icing, m&ms, other little candies that they could decorate with. They mostly just ate the candy but had a good time and were happily occupied. You could also do a make your own pizza kind of thing instead if you already have a b0day cake.

We also just let them play outside with balls and stuff. You'll find that at this age, if you can just send them outside to play that they will be off and running and entertaining themselves. It worked out very well and was very little work.

Here are two ideas I have planned for my own son's 2nd birthday party. We're doing a truck theme:

1. Get two dump trucks and have "races" to move a rock from one side to the other.

2. Collect empty cereal boxes and the like (with limited time, call your friends and neighbors to ask for their boxes too) and let the kids build towers with them. Take a tennis ball, and dangle it from a tree limb on a piece of clothesline, then cover the ball with electrical tape or duct tape (to hold the string on it and camouflage it). You now have a wrecking ball the kids can aim at the towers and take turns knocking down so they can rebuild it.

I'd also break out the sidewalk chalk, let the kids color on cheapy white paper plates to make face masks (or whatever they like) and designate a couple of adults as eye-hole cutters (I wouldn't bother trying to do a string to hold the masks on at this age - let them hold them up to do peek-a-boo and make it harder for them to have an obstruction while running/playing).

The local grocery stores have balls - lightweight soft balls that are about the size of a volleyball - for under $2 each. I'd have a few on hand to just let the kids play with. Oh - maybe organize a dandelion hunt and have them weed your lawn at the same time! ;-)

You could also just do cupcakes for the cake, and put out different colored sprinkles in little cups to let them decorate their own. Lots of fun, cheap and easy, and it takes some time and can be part of the festivities.

Here's some ideas that I've used in the past:

Take a laundry basket and a ball or sock balls and play a game of "hoops".

Read a book to the children

Put out some paper and crayons and let the children draw

Fill a small bucket with water and using old clean paintbrushes ( or buy the real inexpensive foam ones at Home Depot) and let the children "paint" your patio, shed or the side of your home.

That's all I can think of for now - that would be age appropriate for that group.

T.,
I'm sorry about your job loss. You will find something else.
I bought an inflatable limbo stick for my son's party as a back up game idea IF we had extra time. Let me tell you--it was the HIT of the party! It was from Party City and cost about $2. very fun! Drop clothespins into a bottle game. Bean Bag Toss into a hula hoop or similar. Pin the Tail on the Donkey also costs about $2 and they will love it. Don't stress. They will have fun just running around together. Have fun!