Younger to Older

I was asked this question "Do you have any ideas for an indoor Elmo themed party for a 2 year old where there will also be 7 and 8 year olds coming?" today and thought it would be a great topic to cover here.

What do you do if your guests range from younger to older? Simple, just have two sets of rules. Are you hiding something? Hide some items in easier spots for the younger children and harder spots for the older children. Move back your throw from line for older children. Let the young ones go blindfold free. And remeber younger children can still have fun with some games even though they don't understand them.

Here are some examples using the Elmo theme. (Also notice a lot of these games are spinoffs from the Basic Games section)

Find Dorothy – Hide either construction paper goldfish or goldfish crackers. To make it work for both younger and older kiddos just do it like you would an Easter egg hunt. Hide some really easy for the little ones and harder for the older ones. You could also give the little ones a headstart. Or you could even divide it up into two games. Hide lots of fish for the little ones and make rhyming clues for the big kids to find a picture of Dorothy in her bowl or a bowl of Goldfish crackers.


Pin the Nose on Elmo – Draw a big picture of Elmo without his nose or just print out a picture and draw a dashed line over the nose. Cut out a bunch of orange ovals and put doublestick tape (or rolled over scotch tape) on the backs. You could either do two of them side by side (or maybe even one Elmo and one Cookie Monster or someone else) one for the big kids and one for the little or just let the little ones do the same one but without a blindfold.


Throw the Crayons in the box – Decorate a box to look like a crayon box. Either buy one of those crayon banks (I have seen medium sized ones at the dollar store) or decorate a crystal light type container to look like a crayon. Then they throw the crayon in the box. Just have the bigger kids stand further away.


Musical Blankies – cut wavy borders around pieces of construction paper and draw little decorations on them (you could even glue little tassles to the corners to make them look more like blankets) or if you can find some cheap fabric you could just use little rectangles of that. The younger children might not exactly know whats going on but they will still have fun. A good idea is to give them stickers or some small prize as they get out.


Or you could do more of a cakewalk type game. Number the blankies and each time you turn off the music draw a number. Whomever is on that number gets a prize. You could segway this into your cake time too and say that once everyone has a sticker it's time for cake.


Elmo Memory– Make pairs of cards (just cut construction paper into rectangles and draw little pictures on them). Divide them up so that the pairs are not together. Hand out half of them to the kiddos. Have the rest of the cards set out on a table. The matches for the little ones can be placed face up and the older kids matches placed face down.


Elmo Has Mail Charades – Decorate a box to look like a computer, tape or glue an envelope onto the screen. On slips of paper draw a little picture of an animal with the word next to it. For the little ones they can pick out a slip and just ask them what noise that animal makes. The older kids can read it to themselves and act it out without making noise.


Mr. Noodle Says – Play just like Simon Says. The little ones may not get it but if you have Mr. Noodle telling them to jump up and down and other silly things they will still think it is fun.