5 Birthday Party Ideas To Make Your Child's Special Day Memorable

August and September are my favourite months...they are Jerry's and Kiki's birthday months, and also a great time to let out my creative energy! The run-up to the party is the most memorable for we all do it together—it isn't perfect, but we do put our best foot forward.

What Are Theme-Based Birthday Parties?

Theme-based birthday parties are the parties where in a theme is chosen and everything is according to the theme. For instance if you have a son and have chosen a pirate’s theme then everything ranging from decorations, to the food to games and even the return gifts will have some of the theme element in them.

How Are They Different From Regular Birthday Party?

The only major difference in theme birthday parties is that it adds more fun in terms of costumes that children will wear to the party and of course the cake. Other than that there is not much of a difference.

How I Select My Child’s Birthday Party Theme?

While we organise our parties, we go back to the basics: Children should have fun and run around; we would like to throw a simple yet memorable party.

1. Selecting a theme: Creating a theme around the birthday party gives us a bit of focus for planning. Usually, we spin the theme around the children's favourite book, or nursery rhyme. For Jerry's birthdays we have had Noddy, Jungle Book and Jerlockholms (for he was crazy about Geronimo Stilton), and for Kiki we’ve had Old MacDonald had a Farm, Baby Olympics (it was the year of the games) and disco (she loves to dance!)
2. Invitations: In the era of e-invitations, we stick to handmade greeting cards. The children draw and write the cards with me; however they get the thrill when they personally go to their friend's home (in the condominium) to distribute them
3. Venue and games: We prefer the outdoors. While we were in India we used the park in our colony to celebrate the party. Now that we are in Singapore, we use the open gardens or the pool, or the various gardens around
4. We do tend to spend a lot of time on planning for the games- for Kiki's Old MacDonald themed birthday, we built a scarecrow and had cut-outs of farm animals which the kids coloured and made a farm. Jerry's Jungle Book had a machan around which we designed games, and for Jerlockholms we had a treasure hunt with clues planted in the condo. For Kiki's Baby Olympics we had racing tracks, long jumps and other Olympic games
5. Decorations: The best decorations for us have been streamers, balloons and homemade cut-outs for photo booths. We usually hang the decorations on a sturdy rope and staple streamers and tie the balloons onto them
6. Return gifts: I avoid goodie bags with candies and other such things. So far our preference has been books, backpacks, compass and magnifying glass, catapults; usually our return gifts are small, but the kids love it

Over the years we have realised that children appreciate the smaller things and a simple low-cost birthday party is great fun too, because we put it together with all our love and affection.

Tell us your best birthday party ideas in the comments below!