Games and Activities
When the kids arrive to your Fourth of July party, paint small American flags onto their faces.
Stars and Stripes T-Shirts. Get everyone in the Independence Day mood with a T-shirt craft that doubles as your party favor. Make these at the beginning of the party so they dry and the kids can wear them for a great group photo at party's end.
You will need:
- Newspaper and cardboard
- Plain white T-shirts
- Pencils, masking tape, and large star stickers
- Small sponges
- Red and blue fabric paint
- Paper plates
Cover your work area with newspaper and place pieces of cardboard inside each T-shirt to keep the paint from bleeding through. Use the pencil to lightly sketch out your design on the shirt. Apply long strips of tape where the white stripes will go and stickers where the stars will be. Use your imagination and make an offbeat flag design. (You can use strips of tape to create straight lines for the stars if you're doing a traditional flag.)
Pour fabric paint on the paper plates for easy dipping. Dip a sponge into red paint and then onto the design where you want stripes. Dip a different sponge into the blue paint and paint around the star stickers. You can also make star stamps by cutting a raised star shape into half a raw potato and dipping it in blue paint.
Hats Off To America. To make an easy hatband, cut two strips of red, white, or blue paper about 2" wide. Staple the ends together and fit the band around each child's head. Tape the strips together to hold the size of the child’s head, and then staple the paper in place. Decorate these hatbands with stars and stripes, stickers, glitter, etc. Hang pieces of red, white, and blue crepe paper along the top of the band (but not blocking the face). Make small slits about 2"–3" long at the ends of the crepe paper for fringe. The kids will look like walking firecrackers!
To become a real star, make a hatband as above, but cut out red, white, and blue triangles and staple the wide ends around the band. Fold them down so the kid’s heads look like one giant star with many points.
U.S. Flag Relay. Have the kids make small U.S. flags and place them in red, white, and blue sand pails with sand filler at the bottom. Turn this decoration into a game. Divide the kids into two teams and have them run, grab a flag, and quickly walk back to the team line. The next person must do the same. The team with all of the flags in hand the quickest wins! Let the kids take the flags home as a goody.
Sidewalk Chalk Mural. Have red, white, and blue sidewalk chalk available to give to the kids and let them create their own patriotic mural. They can create an American flag, fireworks, the Washington Monument, etc., whatever suits their fancy. This is a great activity for a dry Fourth of July day!
Egg Spoon Relay Race. Boil a dozen eggs and color some red and blue. (Be sure to keep some white!) Divide the kids into two teams, and provide each with a spoon and eggs. The kids must balance a colored egg on their spoon and walk quickly from one end of the yard to the other and return. If the egg drops, the team member must begin again. The first team with all members completing the relay race wins!
For older kids, water balloons will be loads of fun. A twist on traditional water balloon games is making a small hole in each balloon, then filling the balloon with water and letting the kids toss the leaking balloon. It becomes a bit of a time bomb, as you don’t want to be the last one holding the balloon when it finally runs out of water! Quick, easy, and fun!
Play classic relay races and picnic games, such as the ring toss, sack race, or three-legged race.
Have the girls add red, white, and blue star beads to shoe laces for added fun.
Creative Rockets. Provide each child with cardboard tubes, tin foil, craft paper, tissue paper, glue, markers, ribbon, and child-friendly scissors so they can make their own rockets.
Red, White, and Blue Taste Test . Put out all sorts of food and spices in a series of small dishes. Blindfold the kids and have them guess what each food is. Ideas for tasting include salt, ketchup, blueberries, strawberries, French salad dressing, mayonnaise, sponge cake, strawberry jam, pepper jack cheese, beets, tomatoes, garlic, bananas, cherries, etc.
End the evening with a bang if there's a local concert with fireworks nearby. Pile the kids into several cars and head to your local park for free entertainment that feels as if it's planned just for your child's big day. Don't forget the bug spray and sweaters for the evening chill under the sparkling skies.
