The kids (aka their parents) are usually invited to bring a plate of food to share and we play a few boring, predictable games before they spend the rest of the time eating because there is sooooo much food.
I was determined it would be more exciting this year so I started planing early- well before our final concert. Unsure of the weather and not wanting to have to spend too much, I passed up alternative option like having a picnic, going bowling, to the zoo or to an indoor playcenter, and we instead just were in our usual hall at the usual time.
I sorted out heaps of games, keeping in mind the hall we use, the wide ages and developments of the kids and also aiming to keep the parents and junior helpers involved and having fun too. I also asked everyone to bring food- not so much my idea, but assumptions and requests from parents and helpers who have been around so long they know the drill. Ideally everyone would only bring as much food as their family would eat and then when you add it all together there is not extra at the end which a few of us are left with to clean up- but it never really happens does it???
I bought wrapped lollies (wrapped for this type of thing seems so much more hygienic) and heaps of little prizes like tattoos, necklaces, pencils, yo-yos etc from the $2 shop, to give out at the end of each game. We gave them out evenly, just giving the winners a lucky dip first then everyone else got to get one too.
Here are a few of the Games we played:
Musical Spots
Like musical chairs, but with their little dancing spots (contacted cardboard circles of card with pictures on them that we use for the kids to stand on when dancing so they aren't on top of each other)
Hoopla Hoop relays
Group stands in a circle with linked hands, a hoop is put over the starters hand before they hold on. On "go", the hoop must go over the head and be stepped over by each person so that the hoop travels around the circle and back to the start. We usually do a couple of different things like 1 time around, 2 times round, backwards, 2 hoops going the same way, going different ways etc.
Balloon War
You need heaps of balloons for this. You make a border line (out of chairs works well, or otherwise masking tape or something is good too). There are roughly equal amounts of balloons on each side and on "go", teams on each side of the border line try to put all the balloons on the other side. After a period of time the supervisor says stop and balloons on each side are counted up. The side with the least wins. The first time I played this I was told they were bombs or something I think- I't works well with crumpled paper too. Another useful thing is to have everyone run to the walls as fast as they can when stop is called- this stops last moment dumping of balloons to the opposing team, or at least makes it less effective.
Pin the Tiara on the dancer
A classic! I found a picture of a girl in a leotard and a separate picture of a tiara and copied it 30 times and stuck blu tac to the back so they could play.
Balloon Races
This is great fun and quite stupid! kids blow up the balloons and starting from a start line they let go of it. The aim is to see who's goes the furthest!
I wasn't originally bring food myself, but then I found this... Rainbow Cakes in a Jar
What better to give a large group of 5yr olds, the highly coloured, moderately sugar filled brightly iced rainbow cake!!! At the time we didn't have a functioning kitchen, but a brand newly installed oven and a camp kitchen in the other side of the house, so it was quite a challenge. I used a simple butter cake recipie I found online, separated it into bowls for each colour- mixed in the colours to be extra bright (I tipped way too much blue in too)!!! then just layered them gently one on top of the other in the tin an cooked (careful not to cook too much to I didn't loose the colour). I couldn't tell how well it worked until we cut it which was a day later and I spent all that time wondering how it worked!
Anyway, here are the results! Unfortunately I didn't take a photo until the last slice was left as I didn't have a camera handy, but it still looks good! Ignore my messy house please!!
One of the blue looking layers is actually aqua, not that you can tell...
Anyway I loved how it turned out! I'm not sure all the parents of my dancers agreed, but the kids loved it!!
