by sbparents

Fun Activities To Do With Leftover Party Decor

by Barbie L.

With the rise of the COVID-19 outbreak came the fall of many children’s birthday parties. For my family, the venue was booked, the decorations were bought, the favors were bagged… and we had to cancel everything at the eleventh hour. We still decorated our own home, but because it was a smaller, simpler party with just us we had a bunch of leftover decor. It doesn’t seem like we’ll be having big parties again anytime soon, and after nearly 13 weeks on lockdown the kids are getting sick of all their normal toys, so I decided to repurpose some of that decor for fun activites and games. Here are some of our favorites.

Balloon Powered Lego Cars (or Boats)

Explore the science of force, pressure, and thrust by making balloon-propelled Lego cars. I have two kids and am the only one who knows how to blow up balloons, so I almost passed out as they raced them repeatedly, but it was still a lot of fun. You can find a detailed tutorial on Mombrite, and the same author also has a tutorial on balloon-propelled Lego boats.

Paper Cup Olympics

My two year-old-was no competition for my five-year-old in the Paper Cup Olympics, so my five-year-old mostly competed against her own personal bests, which worked out fine! Here are the events we did:

  • Castle Building: Show your your child how to build a castle with three cups on the bottom row (open end down), two cups on the next row up (balanced between the ones below), and one cup to top it off. Then, see if they can build a castle with four cups on the base. How big of a castle can they build before it tips over? For us, this evolved into creative castle building, which was also a lot of fun.
  • Tower Building: Start with a cup on the ground, open end up. Then, stack a cup on top, open end down. Keep alternating the orientation of the cups as you build the tower higher. How many cups can you stack like this before the tower tips?
  • Yank It: To begin, make a stack two cups, open ends down, with a slip of paper separating them and supporting the top cup. Quickly pull out the slip of paper so the top cup falls straight down onto the cup below it, without tipping over. Once you get the hang of it, try it with a stack or three cups (or more), pulling out the top slip of paper first and working your way down.
  • Ball and Cup Pour: Give your child a cup for each hand and a ball small enough to fit in the cups. Have them pour it back and forth from cup to cup. Challenge them to pour from higher and higher heights to see how far apart they can get the cups and still catch the ball.
  • Flip cup: Yes, like the drinking game, but with children’s laughter to make it fun instead of alcohol. Set up a cup so its base is partially off the edge of a table, then flick it from below so it flips over and lands perfectly upside down. First one to succeed wins!

Paper Cup Pressure Experiment

First, show your child how easy it is to crush a paper cup by stepping on it. Then, lay a tray or piece of cardboard over several evenly spaced cups and get your child to stand on it to show them that when their weight is distributed the cups will remain intact. My kids were amazed that the cups could even support Daddy! Full tutorial and advanced options can be found on Science Sparks.

Balloon Olympics

Helium balloons make a party feel special, but you can do so much more will balloons filled with normal air. We had a designated Balloon Olympics day and we all had a blast. Here were the Olympic events:

  • Keep-up: Without catching or holding, don’t let the balloon touch the floor. Count how many times you can bat it before it touches the ground. This can be played solo or as a team.
  • Balloon Tap: Hang a balloon from the ceiling just out of reach and jump to tap it as many times in a row as you can. Get ready to sweat.
  • Penguin Waddle: Participants race to the finish line with a balloon between their knees. The first person to the finish line without dropping the balloon wins.
  • Balloon Tennis: Make racquets by duct-taping paper plate to a plastic utensils or tongue depressors then rally a balloon back and forth with your child. My young kids also loved playing Keep-Up with one of these paddles because they make it easier to reach and hit the balloon.
  • Backhand balance: Balance a balloon on the back of your hand for as long as possible. For younger kids let them use a balloon tennis racquet.

You can find several more potential events in the Balloon Games section of this Energy-Busting Indoor Games & Activities For Kids post on What Moms Love.

Streamer Obstacle Course

I’ve seen this activity blogged in several places, but we made it a little more interesting and engaging by building it in stages. It’s a great way to get kids some physical activity on a rainy day. Bonus (or maybe deterrent): this is just as much exercise for the parent as you have to keep crawling through it to repair and augment. Here’s how we did it:

  1. Tape a few streamers across a hallway low enough for your child to step over. Tell your child that this is Level 1 and ask them to make it through without breaking any streamers. Starting with a success will make easily-discouraged kids more likely to keep trying as the obstacle course gets more difficult!
  2. Tape a a few more streamers across the hallway higher up and see if your child can make it through Level 2. If they break any streamers, repair the damage and ask them to try again. Repeat until they succeed.
  3. For Level 3 add some streamers at orientations that are more difficult to navigate. For example, tape one end of a streamer up high near the start of the obstacle course and the other end down low near the end of the obstacle course. Watch the path your child takes to successfully get through.
  4. Once your child succeeds at Level 3, tape up streamers to block the path they took so they have to find a new way. This is Level 4.
  5. There’s a limit to how many levels you’ll be able to do, because you, the parent, have to crawl through the obstacle course every time you increase the difficulty or make repairs, but keep adding as many levels as you can! If your child is old enough, you can let them add some streamers after you’re no longer able to make it through.
  6. Once you are all done with the obstacle course take a slow motion video of your child running straight through it and breaking all the streamers! They will want to watch it again and again.

Now, I still haven’t figured out what to do with all the leftover favor bags I carefully curated before we knew my daughter’s birthday party wasn’t happening. What would you do with them?