Birthday Parties for Preschoolers
Hip, hip, hooray! Let these ideas for birthday parties for preschoolers make planning your little one’s special day a bit easier.
Birthday Celebrations
Celebrating another year around the sun for your preschooler isn’t only about how big they are getting. It’s also an excellent time to acknowledge how much you have grown as a person, too.
Both are worth celebrating in our book!
When it’s hard to narrow down exactly what kind of party your little one wants, getting some inspiration may be all that it takes. That’s not to say your little one won’t change their mind a few times. 😉
We’ve compiled a list of ideas for birthday parties for preschoolers, decorations, and activities for each to make planning your little one’s special day go as smoothly as possible.
This article may contain affiliate links to products that may help you when homeschooling preschool.
10 Ideas for Birthday Parties for Preschoolers
Things That Go (Trucks, Trains, Tractors, Cars, etc.)
Decorations:
Activities
- Traffic Light Game: Cut a red, yellow, and green circle as big as a paper plate. Glue a circle onto each plate. When you hold up the green plate, kids run. When you hold up the yellow plate, kids need to walk. When the red plate is showing, kids need to freeze.
- Ramp Races: Create ramps with cardboard or plastic and have the kids race different vehicles down the ramps.
- Car Wash: Set up a sensory bin with soap, water, and sponges. Let your little ones wash the vehicles.
- Mini Obstacle Course: Set up a course where kids can pretend to drive through hula hoops, crawl through tunnels, climb up pillow hills, and navigate around cones.
- Decorate a Car: Use a big box to make a pretend car. Let little ones decorate the car with chalk, stickers, crayons, or anything else.
Pets
Decorations
*Dog
*Cat
Activities
- Animal Masks: Use white paper plates and cut out eye holes. Let little ones decorate by adding ears, whiskers, and spots, coloring the mask, and adding a stick to hold the mask.
- Animal Bingo: Create bingo cards with different dogs or cats in each square. Make this a whole activity by using stickers and letting your little ones create their board by placing one sticker in each square. You’ll need one of each sticker to pull out to ‘call.’
- Doggy Go Fetch!: Kids pretend they are pups and run to fetch the frisbee or bean bag.
- Kitty and Puppy Training School: Set up an obstacle course, have your little kitties and puppies pretend to be training, and go through the course.
- Pin the Tail on the Cat/Dog: Kids try to put a paper tail on a cut out of a cat or a dog while blindfolded.
Bonus Activity: Pet Adoption – Set up a pet adoption center using stuffed animals. Little ones choose their stuffed animal, make a collar, and fill out an adoption paper. This is the perfect party favor idea!
Rainbows and Unicorns
Decorations
*Unicorn Swirl Decorations
Activities
- Pin the Horn on the Unicorn: This game is played like “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” but preschoolers are trying to get the horn in the correct spot on the unicorn’s head.
- Make a Rainbow Suncatcher
- Unicorn Horn Decorating: Use paper to make a unicorn horn. Allow the children to decorate the horn. Add a hole punch on either side of the bottom of the horn, and attach string to hold the horn on their heads.
- Rainbow Scavenger Hunt: Hide pieces of paper (or paint chips) around the party area. Have the little ones search for the rainbow.
- Rainbow Hopscotch: Instead of writing numbers on the hopscotch board, fill it in with colors!
Dinosaurs
Decorations
* Dinosaur Warning Signs
*Banner, swirls, honeycomb centerpieces
Activities
1. Dinosaur Dig: Hide dinosaurs in the sandbox and have little ones excavate the area looking for dinosaurs.
2. Dino Egg Hunt: Hide plastic eggs around and have little ones find the eggs.
3. Dino Feet: Create and try walking around in dinosaur feet! See a tutorial here.
4. Dinosaur Tracks: Using plastic dinosaurs, dip their feet in paint and have them walk around on a long sheet of paper, leaving their tracks behind.
5. Dinosaur Face Mask: Decorate a paper plate to resemble a dinosaur head. Kids can decorate the mask with stickers, markers, and googly eyes. Attach a craft stick to the bottom so there is a way to hold the mask.
Out of This World (Astronaut)
Decorations
*Space-themed decorations
*honeycomb centerpieces
Activities
1. Space Rocket: Create and decorate a rocket to send to space.
2. Create a Galaxy: Use black paper as the background. Add star stickers and glitter to represent stars. Little ones can add on the moon and some planets, too.
3. Space Dig: Hide space toys or “space rocks” (made from crushed-up foil balls) in sand or a sensory bin. Have your little ones look for the space toys and space rocks.
4. Astronaut Training Course: Create an obstacle course that children must complete to determine whether they have what it takes to become astronauts.
5. Glow in the Dark Space Games: Check out this post for fun ideas for using glowsticks and balloons. From not letting the ‘star’ touch the ground to volleying the ‘asteroid,’ these games will be lots of fun.
Mermaid
Decorations
*Mermaid decorations, including a jellyfish paper lantern.
Activities
1. Bubble Station: Make bubble wands by bending the chenille stem into a circle. Add a second chenille stem for a handle. Put beads on the handle to make it a bit more fancy). Dip in bubble solution and have fun!
2. Fish Pond: Put some water in a small kiddie pool. Put floating fish in the pool. Have kids catch the fish using their hands or nets.
3. Mermaid crowns: Cut out paper crowns and let your little ones decorate them to make mermaid crowns.
4. Sand Art: Using colored sand (or salt), have the preschoolers pour the colored sand into a small, clear container to make sand art.
5. Mermaid Treasure Hunt: Hide plastic coins, crowns, and seashells around the party area. Have the little ones go on a mermaid treasure hunt to find the items.
Super Heros
Decorations
*Superhero party decorations
Activities
1. Heroic Freeze Dance: This is played like a traditional freeze dance (you stop dancing when the music stops), but with this twist: Little ones have to stay frozen so they don’t get spotted by the villain.
2. Cape Decorations: Give the little ones plain capes and have them use fabric markers, stickers, and other craft supplies to decorate the capes.
3. Superhero Training Course: Set up an obstacle course to help your little ones test their physical and cognitive strength to prepare to save the world!
4. Rescue Mission: Hide ‘people’ (stuffed animals, plastic action figures, etc.) around the party area and send your heroes out to find the people who need help in this scavenger hunt-type game.
5. Make a mask: Use cardstock to make a superhero mask. Have your little one decorate it. Add a string to either side to attach it to your little one.
Wild Animals
This is one of the birthday parties for preschoolers that can be the whole category or you can choose to narrow down the idea to fit your little one’s interests.
Decorations
*Jungle Animal Table Decorations
*Tropical Bird Decorations
*Safari Animal Decorations
*Woodland Animals Decorations
Activities
1. Animal Face Paint: Set up a face painting station where kids can get their faces painted like an animal.
2. Animal Relay Race: Call out different animals and kids need to move like that animal (hop like a kangaroo, slither like a snake, stomp like an elephant, etc.). Call different animals as the kids race to a set point and back.
3. Safari Hunt: Set out pictures, stuffies, or plastic animals. Have kids go and found the different animals. You can give them a map or a check list to make it a bit easier.
4. Animal Charades: Kids pretend to be an animal and the other kids try to guess what animal they are. Make index cards with the picture of the animal to help even the littest kids know what animals they are supposed to act out. Or forego the cards and let the kids pick.
5. Feed the Animal: Make the opening of the box look like a large animal with its mouth open (tiger, hippo, etc.). Have the kids through bean bags into the mouth to feed the animal.
Pirate
Decorations
*Pirate Signs
*Hanging Pirate decorations
Activities
1. Treasure Hunt: Draw up a treasure map with about five different location around your party area. Use pictures to show what the locations are (trees, bushes, the table, etc).
Put an X on the map where you have a treasure hidden. Draw dotted lines from the first location to the X, being sure to hit all five locations.
2.Walk the Plank: Use a long piece (or multiple pieces) of cardboard that has been cut to look like a thin board. Challenge little pirates to walk the plank without falling into the shark infested waters.
3.Pirate Dress Up: Have a place where little ones can add an eye patch and temporary tattoos to dress up like a pirate. Bandanas, face painted beards, and a hook hand would all work, too.
4.Paper Plate Pirate Ship: Use a paper plate and fold it into a boat shape (with the white on the outside). Let little ones decorate their very own pirate ships.
5. Cannonball Toss: Set up buckets or boxes and let little ones toss ‘cannonballs’ (beanbags) into the buckets/boxes.
Sports
This is another one of the birthday parties for preschoolers that can be done as a whole theme or it can be narrowed down to a smaller theme based on a chosen sport.
Decorations
*Mixed Sports hanging decorations
*Mixed Sports table decorations
*Golf
Activities
1. Hula Hoop Fun: See who can hula hoop the longest.
Or use the hula hoops as baskets and try to toss beanbags into the hula hoops on the ground.
2. Sports Training: Set up an obstacle course to keep the little athelets on their toes.
3.Soccer Goal Kicking: Take turns kicking the ball into the goal. You can use nearly anything to mark the goal (small cones, bunched up shirts, boxes, etc.)
4.Balloon Volleyball: Set up a “net” (rope or string) and have the kids play volleyball using a balloon.
5.Relay Races: Create a simple race where kids pass of a baton (a stick of some sort), balance a bean bag on a spoon, or run from one spot to another.
Planning Birthday Parties for Preschoolers
Planning the perfect birthday party can be a headache. Hopefully, these ideas for birthday parties for preschoolers will help alleviate some of your burden.
