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#SafeAtHome | Host a Birthday Party with @sharkyandgeorgeevents
Sharky & George specialise in fun activities for children and adults, hosting parties and events. Their motto is "Finding the fun in everything" so with a lot of families unable to celebrate birthdays with friends and extended family, we asked them to give us some tips of how to host fun activities whilst staying safe at home.
Sharky & George say ...
The most important day of the year for almost all of us is our birthday. It’s a bit trickier to celebrate as we normally would at the moment, but it's still possible to have a brilliant time.
At Sharky and George we’ve changed everything we do and most of our games work really well in a virtual environment, although we’re a little limited in the use of our water balloon catapults!
We’re also sending out loads of themed activity packs and birthdays in a box which provides you with lots of fun stuff to get up to at home, the chocolate making one is by far my favourite!
We’ve come up with some suggestions of ways to ensure your birthday is still as special as ever and one to remember.
5 May 2020
- Send invitations -
If you’re having a party at home, make your own invitations to deliver to your family members. Make sure you personalise them and let them know what the theme is and what you’re expecting them to wear for your party.
- Party food & cake -
A few days before the party, make a plan about party food and get baking and making as a family. If you’d like to be a bit more spontaneous, we recommend a 5-minute mug cake! You can follow our online mug cake video tutorial here
If you need a few more guests to make your birthday tea party really hum, then invite all your teddies and make sure they have a little plate of food as well.
If you’ve never made a birthday cake before, they are remarkably easy to do and are incredibly satisfying. Definitely one for the whole family to get stuck into and ideally include as many of your toys on the cake as possible. A lego cake is really fun to try or a farm yard, or one of our all time favourites is a swimming pool which is basically just a normal round cake with chocolate fingers all round the outside stuck on with buttercream icing, then you fill the middle with chopped up green or blue jelly and then put a load of playmobil or lego figures swimming around in it! Yum!
Candles are key! If you’re having a virtual party on a video call, ask all the parents to prepare a single candle for the final bit of the party and all your friends can sing happy birthday to you and blow out the candles together with you.
- DIY party games -
If you’d rather do your party as a family without a virtual party or dialling in any friends, here are a few games suggestions that work really well, don’t need any kit and are great fun:
- Treasure hunt -
So it’s fun for all the family, one family member could be in charge of hiding half and another could do the other half of the ’things’. If you’re not doing a straight up chocolate/sweet hunt, you could have prizes for the most items found. Stickers are really good for little people, so whenever they find a sticker they stick it to their tummy and the aim is to get as many as they can.
- Hide & seek -
It just works! It’s so exciting, no explanation needed!
- Build a den -
It will require a bit of tidying up afterwards, but there’s something very exciting about tipping over all your furniture, getting bedsheets and blankets together and making a huge den in the sitting room that the whole family can fit into. Once you’re in there, you could read a story, have a snack or play a game.
- The egg cup game -
This is better for over 5 year olds really. Get everyone to sit in a circle, when it’s your turn, fill an egg cup with water then choose a category, e.g. chocolate bars, then silently you choose a chocolate bar and write it on a bit of paper which you keep safe in your pocket. Then walk round the circle and hold the egg cup over each person’s head as they say the name of a chocolate bar. As soon as someone says the one written on the paper in your pocket, pour the water on their head and prove it by showing the paper. Then it’s their turn.
- Fancy dress dance off -
Play your family’s favourite dance tune. Make sure you’re all in fancy dress. Then take it in turns to be the Dance Master. Everyone has to copy the moves of the Dance Master.
Virtual parties
If you have a virtual party and invite lots of friends to join you on a video call, then here are a few technical tips to help make the very most of it:
- Put your computer as close to your router as you can.
- If possible, make sure no one else is using your wifi during the party, in particular streaming music/TV etc.
- Position the camera of your device in a good location so that you can be visible jumping around and playing all the games.
- Make sure you’ve downloaded and tried out whatever platform is being used, we use Zoom.
- If you can, hook up your device to a TV screen and speaker, but a laptop works fine.
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