Ideas for 9 yo girl birthday party

amother

OP ↓

Yesterday at 7:05 am

We're not a birthday party kind of family. But where we live right now, all of my 9 yo's friends/neighbors have birthday parties, and she really wants one. They're pretty low-key, overall. Maybe an activity like making slime, an activity or two, and a cake.

I told her we could have one with a handful of friends. Don't have much of a budget for it. I need a cheap project or game we can do with them that's not too messsy (will have younger kids running around). I was thinking maybe I could run a paint nite kind of thing, but would need ideas of what to have them paint? Very open to other (easy, cheap) ideas. Maybe a baking or decorating activity that's fun for this age? And any other ideas or advice would be great...

amother

Mimosa

Yesterday at 8:46 am

- cupcake decorating there's super easy methods to make flowers search on YouTube
- go to the dollar store and see if there is an item to decorate like a wooden "jewelery" box or glass jar I usually see plenty of options even a photo frame
- quilling (look it up)
- paint night can be good but you need to be well prepped, you don't need an instructor, you can do something simple like paper tape across the canvas or the letter of their name, then paint on top and remove tape when dry
- games like pass the parcel are always popular..

lucky14 ↓

Yesterday at 9:23 am

Pass the present for sure!! You can go to the dollar tree if you have one near you and look for little cute notebooks, fancy stickers (like scrapbooking stickers), and other things like that.

Any kind of food decorating/baking/make your own pizza kind of thing. Cupcake or cookie decorating are always fun. Get cute sprinkles and colorful frosting/icing.

You can look on Amazon for craft kits or YouTube for easy do-it-yourself beginner paint night ideas.

Also classics like pinyatas and pin the tail on the donkey (or some version of that) have gone over well at parties for that age.

Play music in the background and the party. Just adds to the ambiance.

↑ lucky14 ↓

Yesterday at 9:25 am

amother Mimosa wrote:

I wrote my list before reading all of the other responses and see that we wrote a lot of the same ideas. 🙂

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 10:55 am

Thank you so much for the ideas!

Cookie decorating sounds right up her alley. I'm not really a baker, though. Any tips on how to do this easily? Like do we just bake sugar cookies ahead of time (recipe?) and put cookie frosting (again, recipe?) into different bowls and add food coloring, and the girls use clean paintbrushes? Or something? to paint the icing on their cookies? and then maybe different types of sprinkles they can stick to the icing? How long would an activity like that take, and how many cookies should each girl get?

(Can you tell that my daughter and I are VERY different in the activities we enjoy? I would have probably prefered playing sports with my friends in the backyard at that age.)

If anyone has watched a youtube video with an easy paint nite option, can you link it here? My filter has a hard time with youtube unless I know exactly which video I want to watch. I think that seeing it would be really helpful, though...

Also, is pass the present too babyish? I would have thought it would be a good 4 or 5 year old party game. Nine year olds would enjoy it too?

amother

DarkGreen ↓

Yesterday at 11:19 am

I've done "minute to win it" type of relay race games. You can google it. Its like making a cup tower, guessing how many choc chips, finding a certain # of little prizes in flour or rice, that kind of thing.

I've also made a banner (out of plain white paper) and wrote Happy Birthday on it. And as each kid comes, they take a marker and sign their name and a bracha/good wish for the birthday child and/or color in a letter. Then, I hang it up in the kids room so they have a sweet memento.

I've found cookie decorating the easiest craft activity with the least expense and prep. You make the dough beforehand, and then each kid gets a chunk that they roll it out and use cookie cutters. Write their names on the parchment paper, so you know whose is whose. Then they use sprinkles, colored sugar, mini and big colorful chips and choc. chips, etc for decorating. Baker's Choice has a bunch of things you can use. So you can avoid icing (its more messy). And you bake while they eat and play pass the present. You can also get white bakery bags and they can decorate them with markers and stickers, and then they put their cookies in to take home.

Its good to plan for a few activities in case the group needs more directed things to do, but I've also had that some kids sit around the table with cake and snacks and enjoy that for a good while.

Enjoy! Don't forget to take pictures! Its such a great way to celebrate your child and make her feel special!

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 11:19 am

mushkamothers wrote:

Man I remember planning my own 10th birthday party like it was yesterday (instead of 2 decades ago lol) we did pass the parcel with really good prizes and my sister did the music. But maybe we were nerdy oot kids...

I've lived OOT my whole life! And was the dictionary definition of a nerd. For some reason, to me, pin the X on the Y is an age-less game (going to do something with this), but I think of pass the parcel as a preschool game?

What were the prizes that you remember being so good? Any that I can get at the dollar store?

amother

↑ DarkGreen ↓

Yesterday at 11:25 am

Ooh, forgot to add, you can make shrinky dinks. You can buy the paper on Amazon. Its easy because its just no-mess coloring. And its fun, because it changes shape and looks different when it comes out of the oven.

If you want to buy canvases, its really easy to make mosaic pictures. You just use painters tape to criss cross the canvas and then they paint over it. Then peel off the paint, and you have very clear sections and it looks very pretty. Marbleized paintings are also fun but they use a lot of paint. Truthfully, I tend to try to avoid paint for larger groups and pick activities that just need sweeping to clean up afterward.

amother

↑ DarkGreen ↓

Yesterday at 11:31 am

amother OP wrote:

No way! Tried and true! Pass the parcel is fine for 9 year olds. Its an expected party game. It works really well, they can all participate, it keeps them corralled together, it has an element of suspense, fun music and they all get a little prize. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. A little stuffed animal, a small lego set, etc. for the main prize with stickers in the layers for the smaller prizes. Dollar store is perfect.

I like putting up streamers in the room and blowing up balloons for the kids who have a tendency to wander off, they have something to keep busy with. And cheap decorations just make it festive and fun.

↑ mushkamothers

Yesterday at 11:34 am

amother OP wrote:

Nah pinning the tail is dumb. Passing parcel is great just get good prizes. It must have all come from the dollar store. Pens, notebooks, stickers, who knows... we were a family of girls so we knew what was good Smile

amother

↑ OP

Yesterday at 12:15 pm

I just realized...If I'm doing the paint nite thing, do I have to worry about the clothing of girls this age? It's only a few girls, so I could theoretically invite them by emailing their parents and mention that we're going to be using acrylic paint, so please make sure they're dressed accordingly...or is there some sort of washable paint that will work on a canvas and still look good? I have a handful of smocks that will fit them -- babyish? Or risky in case they get something on a skirt or somewhere that's not covered by the smock?

Thank you everyone for helping me out with this. I actually have older boys and I feel like I understood them and their friends more. Never having been a girly girl, this is sort of out of my league...

↑ lucky14

Yesterday at 12:21 pm

amother OP wrote:

Let the parents know you will be doing a project with paint and it won’t be washable so they should dress accordingly.
You can def offer the smocks as an option. If they think it’s too nerdy they just won’t wear them. Their parents will have been warned regarding their clothes.