Kids' Birthday Ideas
Meaningful Celebrations for Your Children
Beyond Chuck E. Cheese and Kid Zone, ways to celebrate kids' birthdays with fun and festivities.
Your child's birthday is a special day. Kids of all ages love to feel special on one day of the year.
If your child’s birthday party is days or weeks away from his actual birthday, or if you’ve decided to scrap the big friends’ birthday party altogether, there are lots of ways you can make your child feel special on his birthday.
- After your child goes to bed the night before his birthday, decorate the outside of his bedroom door with balloons, streamers and signs. When he opens his bedroom door, he’ll get his first reminder that it’s his special day.
- Have the kitchen table dressed up – presents, cake, cards, balloons, streamers and his birthday count-down candle on the table. It’ll be one of the first things he sees in the morning and he’ll get to see it all day.
- If your child is in school, take him out to a restaurant for breakfast in the morning and let him miss the first hour of the school day. Or make arrangements to pick him up for lunch and take him out to his favorite fast food restaurant in the afternoon.
- Watch old home movies and look at old pictures from when he was born. Go through his baby book and reminisce about the day he was born, his first steps, first words and other milestones. Kids love to hear about themselves when they were younger.
- As a birthday party alternative, take your child to a movie and out for pizza, or take the whole family to a picnic in the park. Decide what would be the most special to your child – one-on-one time with a parent, going somewhere with a friend, or a family event – and make that the party this year.
- Let him choose his birthday dinner for that night. It might be four all-starch dishes or the craziest combinations, but let him choose the menu. Don’t forget to rave about how good his choices were!
- At the dinner table, for a conversation starter, have each family member tell a funny story or memorable thing about the birthday boy or girl.
- Look up some things that happened the day or year that your child was born. Or talk about people who share your child’s birthday.
- Think beyond birthday cake. What’s your child’s favorite dessert? Use your imagination and make it so you can put candles in it and use it as a substitute for birthday cake.
- Read a birthday book for a bedtime story. Teaching Heart has a list of picture books relating to birthdays that would be fun for a bedtime story for your birthday child.
The copyright of the article Kids' Birthday Ideas in Parent-Child Activities is owned by Diane Laney Fitzpatrick. Permission to republish Kids' Birthday Ideas in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
