3847

Sleepover (9-12yr) With Lots of Games

April 2002

Stephanie in Deltona, FL  USA

Special Mention

Sleepover Party for 9-12 year olds  I thought these party ideas were fun and new! Please try them out at your birthdays to have a great time. 

Invitations: print 'em out, pick up a pack for a dollar, try the classic pillow invite, or do this. Buy cheap travel size toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste and tie them together with ribbon. Attach an index card that includes party details like when, where, why, who, and what to bring.  Mail to guests, and ask them to bring their toothbrushes to the party! 

Food: Chips, pretzels, popcorn, veggies and dip, cheese snacks, candy, and muffins are classic, popular, easy eats. Buy munchies wholesale to cut down on expenses. Bake your own cake, cupcakes, brownies, and cookies, and mix up your own icing to save a general 35 dollars, and have intense fun in the cooking process! Buy a couple liters of soda, this should not surpass 5 dollars, and buy a ton of kool aid powder mix for cheap beverages that go over well. Instead of ordering a pizza, learn how to make pizza dough, let it rise beforehand, then purchase 10$ worth of toppings and tomato sauce and let the guests make their own dinners!  

Decorations: Decorate with vibrantly colored balloons, streamers, banners, and posters. Hang your favorite curtains up, put in a black light bulb, lay down a colorful rug anything specially different, bright and nice! Leave a lot of room for cavorting and spontaneous romping. Fresh flowers, plug-ins, lamps, and statuettes can add an elegant touch as well as a nice tablecloth and soft background music (which can always been switched to punk rock in the heat of the celebration!). Keep away breakables! Keep the area clean, pretty, and brightly lit in general. Ambience is inexpensive! 

Favors/prizes: For great, inexpensive favors, use a sewing machine to embroider initials or designs on small bath towels which you can buy from the dollar store. Give them away to the girls in little goody bags along with travel size bottles of glitter lotion, bath gel, and small sponges or loofahs! They’ll love it! You can also include bookmarks, gel pens, memo pads, lip gloss, nail polish, candy, and costume jewelry. Just a few, cute items do great in a goody bag! For prizes, I find movie passes, $1 to $5 gift certificates to favorite mod shops, sticker books, and posters are popular.  

Games/Activities:
1) to break the ice, try this. Tape a picture of a well known celebrity on each girl’s back. Have them go around the room for 5 or 10 minutes and ask the other guests yes or no questions about the person on their backs. Whoever finds out who they have wins their picture to take home!  

2) Host a dance competition! Keep a good supply of CD’s on hand (ask the guests to bring their own). Divide the girls up into teams and give them 20 to 30 minutes to work up a routine, come up with costumes, and set up their stage! Videotape each performance to watch afterward!  

3) For a fun, calming craft, make bandannas! Cut up a couple yards of starchy, white cotton material into large squares. Supply puff paint, glitter paint, and other fabric paints, glue, sequins, pipe cleaners, ribbons and bows, buttons, gems, rhinestones, beads, glitter, etc. anything artsy you can scrounge up for under 7$.  It’s a really fun thing to do, and everyone loves wearing their ultra-hip bandannas afterwards!  

4) Provide nail polish, blush, lipstick, glitter, eyeliner, etc that you can pick up cheap at a dollar store. Have the girls give each other makeovers (take before and after pictures!). Award most glamorous, most elegant, sweetest, cutest, etc.  

5) Do Imitations of people you meet at school, relatives, celebrities, etc., even people at the party! See if you can guess who’s being imitated! It’s a really fun game that’s like charades or gestures.  

6) Don’t forsake bingo, limbo, I spy, flashlight tag, hot potato, hilarious handkerchief, truth or dare, pass the parcel, and other traditional party fare.  

7) This is sort of like pin the tail, etc. Powder each girl’s hand with chalk or talcum powder. Hang up a poster of a big hand, yes that’s right, a hand (Blow up an ad you find in some magazine advertising for nail polish or something!). Blindfold the guests, spin them around, and then see who can give the best blindfolded high five to the hand on the wall! 

8) Hang up pictures of pop stars and actors as little kids or babies. See if the guests can guess who’s who. Award the most photo-savvy with a cool picture frame! 

9) Have a photography contest. Buy a disposable instant camera and 2 rolls of film (should be available at hobby stores for under 30 bucks). Give each girl five shots of anything your back yard, the other guests, the birthday cake and develop the shots. Let everyone have a vote on the pictures that turned out the goofiest, cutest, coolest, etc. Give the all around best shutterbug the camera for her own! 

10) Buy some candle wicks from a store and some candle molds, and collect some old, broken crayons. Boil the raw crayons down on the stove, and if you want, stir in some rose or vanilla essence. Provide a mold for each girl, pour in the crayon mixture, and let her lower in the wick. It’s cool to add glitter, seashells, sequins, food coloring, anything to make the candle special. Freeze and let harden thoroughly. Then, when it’s almost lights-off time, light up everybody’s candles, snuggle in, and tell scary stories or girl talk. 

11) Write down dares. Imitate a flamingo with hiccups, Sing an operetta, do the Tango, yodel the lyrics to your favorite song. Cut them up, drop them into a hat, then pass it around to the girls in a circle while music plays. Whoever the music stops on gets to pick a dare, and gets rated by the others on how well she does. The best performer gets a certificate you can print out on your computer. 

12) At the beginning of the party, tell everyone the one word the birthday girl can’t say is water, cake, balloon, or something like that. Anyone who catches her saying it will get a bar of candy! 

13) Rent movies like Spy Kids, Princess Diaries, Winning London, Double Teamed, or Au Pair. Or, if you want to splurge a bit, take the guests out to Spiderman or Clockstoppers or Ice Age, or other theater flicks. Settle down and enjoy the show! 

14) Have a Relay Race! Set up a table with 2 tubes of lipstick, 2 scrunchies, 2 loose slacks, 2 baggy jerseys, 2 pairs of socks, 2 bottles of nail polish, and 2 mini 25 piece jigsaw puzzles. Set up a starting line 20 yards away from the table, and divide the guests into 2 teams. Say go, and the first girl in line runs to the table, puts on the slacks and jersey over her own clothes, puts on some lipstick, ties up her hair in the scrunchie, slips on the socks, puts together some of the puzzle, and paints 2 toenails or fingernails. She then runs back to her line, then back to the table, and takes off everything. By then, the next runner in line can start. Which team will be faster? Reminder: be neat with the makeup or it doesn't count, and don't forget to put together some of the puzzle. If all of your team has gone and the puzzle isn't finished, you forfeit! 

15) Use a homemade recipe for facial masks to mellow out. Lay cucumbers over your eyes and soak your feet in hot water and epsom salt. Let everyone take their turn being pampered.  16) Have a pajama fashion show and girl talk just before bed.  Be safe, have fun!

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