Needing some ideas for how to have a fun birthday party for your children during the Coronavirus lockdown? After all, this is all hard enough on our kids without them feeling like they did not get to have a proper birthday party on top of it all. Obviously, I am not a pro at this by any means. Nobody out there really is at this point. But with a little creativity we pulled off an awesome birthday party for our now three-year-old! Read on for links to all the fun ideas and resources we were able to pull off (despite having to hunt for things like toilet paper) to keep it exciting and make your kids feel like they did not miss a thing.
Before the Coronavirus hit the U.S., I had already planned my son’s party as I typically do using Amazon Prime as one of my go to sources. I had my entire party shopping list populated with everything from decorations and party favors, to cake toppers and games. We love having birthday parties at home in our backyard, but one of my sons’ birthdays falls in the beginning of April and Spring snow is always a possiblity. So we reserve a neighborhood clubhouse in case we get close to time and the weather looks iffy. We usually have between 25 and 30 people and like to get out our bounce house which could get a little tight if we had to put it inside of our house along with all of the guests. But the clubhouse has a great big open place for it. Being under Stay-at-Home orders extended now until April 26th, we had to scrap the clubhouse idea and the idea of having any guests at all.
My kids picked a safari theme and the birthday boy’s favorite animal these days is the cheetah. We obviously did not need all the favors and games we planned for his friends who would no longer be attending. But I did not want to short change my kids just because the guests would not be here, so we turned some of the budget for party favors and such into a budget for a few more fun safari items and gifts to play with that day, including these incredibly soft stuffed cheetah, lion, and black panther.
I will come back to some of the awesome finds I purchased to decorate and make the day special. But better than the stuff, one of the things that made it the most fun was figuring out a way to invite guests even though they would not be able to physically be here. We used Google Hangouts, which is now Google Meet for video conferencing. As Gsuite subscribers for our business, we have the more robust accounts that allow hundreds of people to logon at once and get high definition video feeds of all of the participants. I had heard that there were attacks on Zoom meetings by people interjecting inappropriate content into kids’ meetings lately. True or not, I definitely know of more people using Zoom so I figured it would be a more likely target for those sorts of people. For this reason, I felt safer using Google Meet. I tested it a few days beforehand with a couple of my family members and it worked great.
It was so easy to just create an event on my own calendar that syncs between my phone and my laptop, and invite all of our virtual guests. The guests could each respond with their RSVP and it would show me right on my calendar and also send me an email notifying me who had accepted or who is a “maybe”, etc. It also sent the guests the details of the online party and even a cute little image I created for the “invitation.” Then each of the guests simply had to click a link on the calendar event the day of the party and it would prompt them to log into the Google Meet event. We did not have any issues and everyone really enjoyed it! Ironically, of 16 different people across the country who logged on to celebrate, the only people that had momentary technical difficulties were the two people from my test call days earlier LOL
I cannot say enough about how great that time was together. We decided that instead of just inviting our typical local friends that usually attend our parties, we would take the opportunity to invite all of our family from across the nation that do not usually get to attend our parties. I am so glad we did this. It was heartwarming to be able to share a birthday party with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandpa down in Texas, and my BFF in Pennsylvania, and more family in Illinois and Hawaii, etc. Some of our family even surprised us wearing safari hats to get into the theme and others made the same kind of cake to enjoy alongside of us! It was lively and honestly quite therapeutic, and the kids were thrilled, showing off in front of the camera and getting to see all the smiling faces of their loved ones. We let the guests know in the calendar invite that we planned to sing “Happy Birthday” and eat cake during the hour we had slotted for the Google Meet party. That way the kids would be focused for part of it and more motivated to sit around the laptop engaging and hearing from our virtual guests. It was simply perfect and singing together even with delayed audio was just what the doctor ordered.
I still made a safari cake, just a sized down version. It was getting a little dicey the week before as I had to think ahead because my first grocery pick up order where I hoped to get my cake mix order fulfilled did not happen. So I bought back up supplies I was running low on (flour, sugar, etc.) in case I had to make the cake from scratch. But luckily in my next order, I splurged and ordered two different boxed cake mixes and both were fulfilled! No, I’m not averse to baking a cake from scratch. But I am all about not making things unnecessarily time consuming or stressful when it comes to kids’ birthday parties these days. I try to stretch things out a bit in the week leading up to our birthday parties so nothing is too overwhelming and we can really enjoy the day. I worked on a fractions lesson with my oldest boys while we were baking the cake during the birthday boy’s nap two days before the party and then froze the cake to decorate later. I saved the extra homemade effort for fun decorations on top of the cake the night before the party.
Fun decorations like this Safari balloon garland and this “Let’s get wild” banner made it no less a party than the kids were used to. I also bought a fun glitter birthday candle and these safari animals to double as both toys for the kids and also to go on top of the cake. They are made from nontoxic material and I was able to get them quickly as compared to many party supplies online. It is important during this pandemic to pay attention to where your orders are coming from. Everything I purchased I was able to get within five days for the party and enough in advance to let it temper in the garage before opening the packages. (Can you tell I have been paying attention to how long coronavirus lives on surfaces?)
Instead of the safari animal felt masks I planned to purchase when we were going to have a bunch of children at our home, I decided to do face paint and have some fun with the kids picking animals beforehand and finding good tutorials on YouTube for how to paint them. My kids ended up being a lion, tiger, and cheetah. Here are the video tutorials I used and we were all really happy with how they turned out. All I needed was face paint, brushes, makeup sponges, and a few little dishes of water.
As another dual purpose decor/toy item for the kids, we bought giant inflatable safari animals: a giraffe, a zebra, and an elephant. We moved them about during the party and the kids have been playing with them since. One of my favorite photos from the party was when my oldest son snuck the zebra up and posed him eating the cake.
The weather held out and the kids bounded around in the backyard in the bounce house we bought for only around $150 from Sam’s almost 4 years ago. Four years with at least three birthday parties a year, and the bounce house is still going strong. It is also great because it does not matter if it gets a minor hole because it is a continuous flow bounce house and can hold quite a few tiny tots when we are finally able to have guests again.
Even with no guests physically with us, the party was a hit! The kids had a ball playing on the bounce house, getting their faces painted, visiting with family over Google Hangouts Meet and singing Happy Birthday and having cake together. We later brought the party inside as it got a little cooler, laid out a fun safari tablecloth and had some “real” food. We rounded out the evening with pizza and a movie together. It honestly was such a full day and no one felt wanting at all. I hope you are able to put together a fun celebration for your kiddos during this season and really take the opportunity to embrace some things that we do not always get to do in the hustle and bustle of our normal plans. I would love to hear how your parties during quarantine turn out. Please share in the comments below.
