Favorite Things Party for Kids! (she: Veronica)

If you have kids like mine, they are fresh out of school and already BORED. So, we thought it would be fun to throw a “Favorite Things” party…for KIDS! If you’ve never heard of a Favorite Things party, you are missing out!! They are my FAVORITE parties. Typically they are thrown for adults, but I thought it would be fun to do for kids. If you love it, maybe you’ll be brave enough to throw one for you and YOUR friends. I’m going to share the basic instructions for a “Favorite Things” party and you can adjust it for adults or kids.

What is a Favorite Things Party? In a nutshell, you and your guests bring some of their favorite things, you exchange gifts in a fun way, and everyone goes home with some new favorite things. YIPPEEE!

How To Throw a Favorite Things Party:

• Invite some really fun friends. The MOST important part. 🙂
• Ask them to bring a certain number of their favorite things. Adjust the number of items to the number of guests. For example, for my kids party, there were 6 kids, so I had them each bring 3 gifts. The last one I threw for my girlfriends there were around 30 women, so they all brought 5 gifts. You get the idea. 🙂  NOTE: You can have them bring 3 of the SAME item, or they can bring 3 DIFFERENT items. It doesn’t matter, but you may want to specify that on your invitation.
  * The most often asked question is “can you give me some examples of some gifts?” So here you are…
  KIDS: Go to the dollar tree and pick your favorites. You can give one, or you can combine a couple items in a bag and count is as one.
  ADULTS: Favorite kitchen utensil, hand lotion, nail polish, recipe with a few ingredients, etc.
• Give a price range! For my adult party, I said $5.00 limit per item. For the kids, we did $1.00 cheap items.
• You can also invite guests to bring their favorite appetizer or dessert. OR you can serve all of YOUR favorites.
• When guests arrive, I will have them write their name on pieces of paper. If you have them bring FIVE gifts, then they would write their names on FIVE pieces of paper. Place them all in a bowl and mix them up.
• For large groups: Have your guests put all their gifts on a table and put their name in front of their gifts. For small groups: Have them hang on to their gifts as they sit.
• When it comes time to exchange gifts, pass the bowl around and have everyone draw the same number of names as there are gifts. If everyone brought FIVE gifts, they will draw FIVE names. If they draw their own name, redraw.
• HERE’S THE FUN PART! Have everyone sit in a circle and begin.
  LARGE GROUP: Go around the room and have everyone show one of the favorite item(s) they brought. After everyone has shared their Favorite Things that they brought, have everyone go to the table and find the names that match the names on their papers. They would then take one gift from the matching piles.
  SMALL GROUP: Go around the room and have everyone show the favorite item(s) they brought. Then have each person read the names they have on their papers. After a person reads the names on her slips of paper, those people would then give her a gift.

Other tips and suggestions:

KIDS: You may want to explain ahead of time that they won’t be getting EVERY single gift. I used the tried and true, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” We didn’t have any problems and they instigated their own trading. We served “favorite” kids foods and had some of their “favorite” treats that everyone got.

ADULTS: You may want to choose a different theme if you decide to throw these often. Throw a Spring Favorite Things party, a winter one, a cooking one, a spa themed one, etc. You get the idea. HAVE FUN with it!

This will become one of your FAVORITE THINGS!

*Still have questions? Leave your question in the comments and I’ll answer.

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