Best time of day -  during the summer finish active entertainment before 12 noon and if in the afternoon start at 3pm.  Perfect length for active entertainment 75 minutes.

Do not have food on show otherwise you are competing with party food, which is not possible, do not allow kids to eat during the entertainment – too much of a choking hazard and they end up feeling sick and they don’t get the most out of the sports

Must haves:

• a sense of humour
• a whistle
• buckets full of patience

Remember to make the birthday child feel special – get them to lead their teams or have the final say if  a choice has been given.

Remember also that you are dealing with kids and often you need to repeat things several times to get them into action, don’t loose patience – enjoy it!

1. If you are in charge of the food don’t think you can do it alone – get a couple of friends to help run the entertainment or get a friend to deal with the food and you run the entertainment with a friend.
2. The perfect size group for sports party fun is 20 – 30 kids – you have a great ready made atmosphere, but this does not mean you cant have a sports themed party with smaller groups – it just means you need more games and it can take a little longer to really get the kids going.
3. Keep the group together – be conscious of those that try to wander off – try and engage them – ask them to help and they will soon get into it.
4. Parties are not the place to have exclusion games – by that I mean games where kids get out – it happens at school but a party is not the place and then the excluded children loose patience.
5. Do not dish out prizes during the entertainment – kids lose focus and become more interested in what they did or didn’t get and things get broken – keep this for a prize giving ceremony at the end of the fun – or don’t do it – kids really don’t need prizes to have fun.
6. Have lots of named water bottles handy – kids get very thirsty – try to avoid anything but water as fruit juice and fizzy drinks just makes them more thirsty and especially in the hot weather they need water to hydrate.

Games and basic equipment:

1. minimum of 4 – 5 soccer balls, but you can never really have too many.
2. 5 hessian sacks
3. 5 Tennis balls
4. rope for tug of war – beware of nylon rope as it really burns,
5. 12 cones/markers – to mark out areas in which the games take place

Games with the above equipment:

Poison ball:

1. Mark out a large circle with your cones, this shows the areas within which the kids will move.
2. Get your helper to stand on the cones at the opposite side of the circle to you.
3. Get the children to move around within the marked area – you and your helper roll the balls across the circle at any angle trying to tip the kids with the ball.  If a child is tipped by the ball anywhere between the knee and the foot , they come and join you on the outside of the circle and try and tip the rest of the group – keep going until you have one or two left in the circle – kids always want to do this over and over.

Relay Races:

Place 4 cones a few steps apart – then place a cone directly opposite some distance away – so the children know where they are racing to.

Main aim is to get everyone cheering for their team mates and having fun together

1. split the children into teams by giving them numbers ie: if you have 20 children split them into 4 groups of 5 – so go around giving them a number 1 – 5. More kids then increase the number of the teams

2. In their groups you can get them to:

• get into the sacks and have sack relays
• running relays
• egg and spoon races – pudding spoons and tennis balls
• with any spare cones they can have conehead races
• ask the children for an idea – birthday childs idea rules!!

Tug of War:

Main aim is to have a tussle with your friends and not the outcome.

1. Find the middle of your rope and tie a colourful scarf so everyone can see it.
2. Put one marker at the middle of the rope and two others equal distances away from the middle marker – this is where the teams have to pull the rope marker to.
3. Split the kids into two teams
4. Get the kids to pick up the rope, but not to pull unitl the whistle goes.

Safety:  With tug of war it is very important to tell the children not to let the rope go – if they slip, they should hold on and pull themselves back up. Letting the rope go,unless you are on soft sand only ever ends in injuries.