How to Throw a Fabulous Kids Christmas Party (and not lose your mind!)

One thing we’ve done for the past few years around Christmas is host a kids Christmas party. My kids actually came up with the idea since parents and adults are always getting together around the holidays, they thought, “why not us too”? And so the annual Christmas craft party started and it’s one of their favorite days of the year. Since we are getting ready for the next one, I thought I’d share with you how to throw a kids Christmas party, and more importantly, how not to lose your mind in the process!

Kids Christmas Party

There’s a few simple things you need to keep in mind before you can do this successfully without losing it:

It won’t be perfect. And no one will care. This is not a party to impress your neighbors. It’s for kids and trust me, they couldn’t care less about your perfect decor or your clean house.
In fact, that brings up the second most important point. Do not clean your house before this party. Do not waste your energy because as soon as all those little hands and feet leave, your house will need to be cleaned.
Keep it simple and a max of 3 hours. No more than 3 activities or you will lose their interest and they will be wandering your house looking for stuff to do.
If it’s nice out, give them a break between activities to go burn off some energy running around outside.
Unless you’re comfortable with huge numbers of kids in your house, it’s probably ideal to keep it around 15 or less kids.
And unless you can corral large groups of kids like a pro, I wouldn’t do anything involving paint. It’s chaotic and you don’t want to be cleaning paint from your floors before Christmas!
Don’t try to get too complicated. Home made snow globes and gingerbread houses are cool, but probably not a good project for 15 kids. Plus it’ll get expensive for all those supplies.
5 years old is probably the minimum age – at least that’s what has worked good here. Any younger and it’s a little too difficult to manage.
Breathe. Yep, you’ll wonder what on earth made you think this is a good idea, but breathe and it’ll be great! Your kids will love it and they will look forward to it every year!

Party Ideas

Now that you know you won’t lose your mind, here’s some fun suggestions for a great party.

Simple ornaments they can decorate (with washable markers of course) – we’ve done popsicle stick Christmas trees in the past. I assembled the trees with a glue gun before all the kids arrived. Get craft supplies to help them decorate. Or last year I found a pack of wooden ornaments and let them all color like they wanted. Make sure to put their names on the backs so they don’t get confused. There are tons of simple ideas on Pinterest. Just keep it simple.
Decorate cookies – we buy sugar cookies and a few tubs of icing and a million sprinkles. Plan on at least two cookies per kid and have some extras. Use paper plates to divvy out the icing and plastic knives.
Christmas Bingo – this is a hit every time! I found a Christmas bingo set at a craft store and it’s a good long way to fill the time. I bought about 4 big packs of Skittles or other candy and we gave out a few prizes. We did four rounds and four prizes.
Write letters to Santa (I’ve got a great free printable for this too –click here!) Print them out, have a basket of pens/pencils and send them off with an envelope for Santa!
Musical chairs with Christmas music – If you’ve got the room to spread out and enough chairs, this is a fun activity that’s not messy!
Decorate a picture frame – craft stores or the dollar store have some inexpensive frames. Get some of those foam stickers and let them decorate away! They can use it for their Santa pics!
Photo booth. Get some Christmas props like these. Take their pics and then send to the parents.

One other tip – I would advise having this after lunch. You don’t want to try to feed or clean up after all those kiddos! Do it once and you’ll be a pro at throwing a fun kids party without losing it! Good luck and I’d love to hear any other ideas for an amazing kids Christmas party! Feel free to comment and let me know!