Winter indoor birthday party ideas come in handy when cold weather keeps you from celebrating outdoors. Every kid wants to play in the snow and build a snowman, am I right?
This blog will give you plenty of winter indoor birthday party ideas that will make you the best mom on the block, whether you have too much snow or live where you wish you did. Games, food, decorations, and much more!
WINTER BIRTHDAYS
I did not have any kids with winter birthdays until I started doing foster care. Then all the sudden, it seemed like every birthday fell in cold weather. We don’t live where there’s a lot of snow — just cold — so there was no way to predict what we’d be able to do outside. Just as well, because I don’t really like the cold that much. I grew up in the Valley of the Sun. You almost always do parties outside.
The party I threw for my 6-year-old foster son was a winter indoor birthday party, complete with snow, snowflakes, hot chocolate, and building snowmen. These ideas go well for ages 5 to 10. Here’s the categories for throwing an indoor winter birthday party.
PREPARATION
I suppose the first step to having a party is knowing how many people you are going to invite. For me, 6 to 8 kids is plenty. I usually invite my max (let’s say 10), knowing that not all the kids are going to come.
You are going to need adult reinforcements. Ask one of the parents, a friend, or an older child to join you for crowd control and to help you transition from one activity to another.
Planning and spreading my to-do list out is vital. I suggest you decide ahead of time what you can do way ahead, a day or so in advance, and the day of. If you have older kids that can help, that’s even better. Delegation is my best friend.
Examples of way ahead would be: invitations, buying supplies, and asking a another adult to assist. A day or so in advance might be: making food (cake/cupcakes/cookies, soup, snacks), getting supplies out and organized in another room if available, preparing send-home gifts, letting your helper know what they need to do, and cleaning (only the rooms people will see — haha). The day of includes decorating, setting food out and preparing food that needs to be ready fresh, setting up games, and having everything ready.
INVITATIONS
You can make this as elaborate or simple as you desire. I honestly can’t remember what I did — probably bought a fill-in-the-blank at the store or designed a quick quarter sheet invite with Publisher that I printed and sent to school with him. Canva is a great resource to make invitations, too. Include the date, beginning and ending time, and location. If you want them to RSVP, give them the name and phone number and a deadline. If there’s any special instructions, include that. For example — wear clothes you can get messy in; enter through the side door; or maybe you want everyone to dress up in winter clothes like mittens and scarves or as their favorite Frozen character.
DECORATIONS
I’m not a huge decorator for birthday parties, simply because I don’t usually have the energy. (Weddings are another deal.) I keep it simple with balloons and maybe some streamers. In this case, I used balloons in the shape of his age on a door to another room. For winter, cool colors are great — blue, white, silver, purple, gray, etc. The movie Frozen makes it possible to get a lot of winter-themed decorations. Go all out if that’s your thing. If I had the energy, I might have decirated tge stations with all kinds of snowflakes, snowmen, balloons, banners, and confetti.
Stations make it easy to rotate — for instance front room for games, kitchen for hot chocolate, dining area for food, etc. Part of the decorations can include party hats, necklaces, and noisemakers.
GAMES
There are a lot of fun winter games you can choose from. Here are some ideas:
- Pin the Carrot on the Snowman: have a large snowman on the wall and each child has to attach a carrot to the face while blindfolded.
- Snowball Races: Children must carry a cotton ball on a spoon to one side of the room and back without dropping it. This can be done in teams as a relay or individually.
- Winter wear Relay Race: Kids have to grab the winter clothes out of a box and get all the way dressed and then undressed, putting the clothes back in the box before tagging the next person. The clothes can include a snow suit or coat, hat, gloves, and scarf.
- Snowball Fight: Divide into two teams and stand on opposite sides of the room. Each team has a container full of snowballs. When the music is playing, they can throw the snowballs at each other. When the music stops, they stop and gather snowballs closest to them to replenish their supply. The easiest way to make snowballs is with wadded up paper, but you can also buy soft snowballs by clicking here. Visit Sweet Staci’s and this set comes with a cute bucket to store them in.
- Do You Want to Build a Snowman?: In teams of two, one child wraps the other in a roll of toilet paper from head to foot. They have to put a hat on their head, a scarf around their neck, and large carrot in their mouth. Whoever finishes first, wins.
- Smash the Snowman: Using a ping pong, kids try to knock down a tower of foam cups that are decorated like snowmen.
We chose to do the last two. The kids were darling and had a blast, and we couldn’t stop laughing. You can choose to do prizes for the winners if you like. (I did not.)
FOOD
You can choose to do your party at a meal time and include a warm winter food like soup or chili. I wanted to keep it simple and did ours between mealtimes. We had a mini hot chocolate bar where they custom created their own cups of cocoa.This included marshmallows, crushed peppermint, and butterscotch bits. You could add mini chocolate chips and whip cream, too.
I made the hot chocolate ahead of time in the big white pot, but you can simplify your work for older kids by having the cocoa packets. For older kids, candy canes are fun to stir with. (Younger kids, not so much.)
Instead of a birthday cake, we decorated snowflake sugar cookies and then each child got to put a candle in their cookie and everyone made a wish for the birthday boy. You can also do this with cupcakes. I bought blue and white snowflake sprinkles and crystals to put on the frosting.
This activity ended up being much messier than I anticipated. I underestimated the ability of 6-year-olds to spread frosting. Actually, I guess what I did was forget that the moment one child started using their fingers, the rest would join in. Older kids would probably have been cleaner. But the point was that they had fun. TIP: be sure to have lots of wipes, paper towels, or washcloths handy. (I also thought it might have been a good idea to mention wearing messy clothes.)
SEND HOME PRIZES
One other activity I had was fake snow. After presents were opened and we waited for parents to arrive, I pulled out a large tub of snow I’d made, and they all got to play with the snow on the table. I pre-made little containers of snow for them to take home. If memory serves me correctly, I used conditioner and baking soda. Here are several recipes you can choose from. If your kids are older, they could even make the snow as part of the party.
OTHER POSSIBILITIES
There are many more winter indoor birthday party ideas you can choose from. I’ve had movie parties for my older kids, and showing any of the Frozen movies is a good option if you do not have time or money to make the party items. Younger kids don’t sit that long very well, so it’s a super option for the 10 year olds. Grab some pizza, popcorn, candy, and it’s an easy way to eat up 2.5 to 3 hours. Remember to leave enough time for everyone who arrives late plus time to open presents.
If you live in warm-weather climates, you have more options. You can actually go outside and do these activities where there’s more room. They’re also able to make more of a mess without fear of ruining the house. If you have a large sheet or outdoor screen and a projector, that’s a fun place to watch a movie. A winter theme in locations where you don’t experience “winter weather” is a lot of fun. I’ve even heard of some friends of mine getting someone to bring a pickup load of snow to their party, since it’s only about 2 hours from the high country.
A pinata is also a fun activity. I’ve seen some very cute snowflake and snowman pinatas out there.
If your kids are into science, there are great, fun winter science activities you can do. Check out this video by Dad Lab. You can go to Little Bins for Little Hands for directions on doing winter science experiments for kids.
PARTY ON!
In this blog we talked about many winter indoor birthday party ideas. From planning, to prizes. I hope this stirs your imagination and gets you planning something fun for your winter babies — no matter how old they are.
YOUR TURN
I hope you’ll join in and share some of your fun experiences with winter birthday parties. Have you done something fun I haven’t mentioned? What outdoor winter activities do you enjoy in the snow? Or are you like me and hibernate all winter? If you live where there’s warm weather, do you wish you had snow?
