Anybody can put a game in front of kids. The whole thing lives or dies on who is running it. I keep it funny, I keep it on pace, and I keep it entertaining for the adults watching from the side as well as the kids on the floor.
Look through the library, choose the games you think will land with your crowd, and I’ll build the program around them.
A performer asks kids to watch. A competition asks them to do something. That’s the whole difference, and it’s why a magician can lose a room in twenty minutes while a game with a score holds it for two hours.
So every game here has a score, a name and a reason to step forward. They run five to eight minutes, then switch. Long enough to get good at it, short enough that nobody drifts off to the snack table.
There are three ways a game gets run: everybody wins, where the game is built so every kid walks away with something. Team games, red against blue, where one team takes it and both still walk away with something. And individual challenges, teams of one, two or three going head to head for a prize.
Not a list of ideas off the internet. Ninety one games I have actually run, in actual rooms, with actual kids, and kept the ones that work.
91
Games in the library, every one written down and numbered
All of it
Props, cannons, cups, noodles, hoops and prizes arrive in my van
One host
Somebody on the mic the whole time reading the room
Every kid
Nobody watches from the side. That is the entire design
Beach balls, pool noodles, hula hoops, bean bags, giant inflatable rings, five hundred red cups, clothespins, scarves, blindfolds, a t-shirt cannon and one enormous pair of granny panties. You buy nothing. It all comes out of the van, it all goes back in the van, and your floor looks the same afterwards as it did before.
What makes it work is not the equipment. Anybody can put a hoop on a gym floor. It works because there is somebody on the mic the whole time deciding what happens next — when to push a game harder, when to cut it, when the quiet kid at the back is finally ready to be pulled in, and when the room needs to come down a gear before it goes up again.
That is the difference between thirty kids playing a game and thirty kids losing their minds. Same game, same props. Different afternoon.
The whole list. What each one actually involves, and the picture that goes with it, is behind the link below.
50 cup games that run as their own event.
You have the names. The link gives you the rest: a picture of every game, a description of how it actually plays, and filters for age, for whether it lands with girls, boys or toddlers, and for the kind of game it is.
Leave me your email and I’ll send you the link. I read every request myself, so it comes from me, not a robot.
Most kids parties die in the second hour. A few kids win everything early, the rest work out they’re not going to, and they quietly check out.
The format is built so that can’t happen. Games get rotated between the three formats, so a kid who loses a head to head still takes something from the next team round, and the everybody wins games make sure the quiet ones are never left out. The prize table opens at the end and everyone is part of it.
You stock the prize table, and you get told exactly what to buy and at what tiers. It’s the cheapest part of the party and it does more work than anything else on the budget.
Want the plumber themed version with the golden coin economy? That’s the Super Mario Party.
Fair. That’s the quiet worry behind most booking emails.
Here’s the honest answer. A room full of kids with nothing to do is chaos. A room full of kids on teams, with a score and somebody on the mic telling them what happens next, is loud but it’s controlled. Loud is the goal. Chaos isn’t.
The running order is built to breathe. A high energy game, then a quiet reset, then a performance moment, then back up again. That rhythm is deliberate, and it’s the reason nobody ends up crying, bored or bouncing off your furniture.
Tell us the space you’ve got and the game list adjusts to it. The energy doesn’t change. The footprint does.
Usually eight to twelve, depending on the age and how long each one runs. Games go five to eight minutes each, then switch, with a cake break in the middle. Younger kids need shorter rounds and more of them.
Nobody gets dragged in. They get put on a team so they’re included without being the centre of attention, and they still share in what the team wins. Most of them join in on their own by the second hour once they’ve watched it be safe.
A living room with the furniture pushed back is enough for most of the library. The cannon and the water games want a backyard or a gym, and those get swapped for indoor versions when the space is tight.
You stock the prize table and you get told exactly what to buy and at what tiers. It’s the cheapest part of the party and it does more work than anything else on the budget.
Yes. Send the theme and the game names, the finale and the prize table get built around it. Themes land best when they run through the whole afternoon instead of just the tablecloths.
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Send the date, the ages and roughly how many kids, and you’ll get a game list built for your room.