If you have a birthday party to plan, you may wonder what fun games you can provide for the children to play—something engaging but not too complicated or messy. You will want games that won’t easily frustrate children and activities that will be exciting for kids of all ages.
Here are a few simple yet fun games that kids would love to play. These games can liven up any child’s birthday party and make it a day to remember.
Animal Charades
Charades can be a great game in and of itself, but it gets an added fun factor when combined with something all kids love – animals. Older kids will laugh and cheer, and even toddlers can join in the fun, growling and stomping around. Animal Charades can be played both inside and outdoors and can be played with a small party or broken into teams if you have many guests.
Tie-Dyed Squirt Guns
This game is a new twist on the traditional tie-dyed t-shirt parties. Supply each of the kids involved with a plain white t-shirt, a squirt gun, and water colored with non-toxic natural colored dye. Let each child have a different color to squirt and turn them loose. Perfect for warm-weather fun, this will not only entertain them, but the running around will burn off energy. And in the end, each child will have a unique and funky shirt created by the water war.
Scavenger Hunt
This activity is another fun game that can be played indoors and out and enjoyed by children of all ages. Either in teams or individually send them out with lists of items to find. Have a small prize for the winner, or winners, and watch as the kids have fun hunting out things on their list. As another idea, you can send each off with a digital or smartphone camera and instruct them to take photos of the items on their list.
Karaoke
As kooky as it seems, having a karaoke contest can be lots of fun for kids of all ages. Provide songs that they love, then watch as they laugh and show off singing and dancing. Even the shiest child can have a good time with a fun song to sing.
Knowledge Or Dare
This game is fun with kids of any age. On several strips of paper, write funny, challenging, or crazy tasks for each child to do, such as balance a bowl of water on your head, cluck like a chicken or spin around until you are dizzy. Fold up the paper strips and place them inside a jar or can. Each child has to then answer questions about the birthday child; wrong answers result in choosing a strip of paper and doing whatever is written on it.
Have You Ever Bingo
This game is played like a regular Bingo game, but with a slight twist. Make strips of paper listing several things people may have done, such as eating fish, riding in an airplane, or taking piano lessons. Then write out the activities in different squares using this blank bingo board. Next, hand out the boards to each player. Being pulling the strips of paper, announcing the activity. Only the people who have done what was stated can mark the box containing that specific activity. This can make the game last longer than a typical bingo game, but it can also be fun for everyone to get to know each other.
What Am I?
Give each child a piece of paper with an object or an animal written on it. Tell them to keep what they are a secret from everyone else. Each child has to act out what they are assigned during the party while the other players try to guess. You can go from easy to hard depending on the age of the children involved and offer a prize to whoever guesses the most correctly. There is also a card game that you can purchase on Walmart.com if you prefer using a premade set.

If you are looking for some great board games to play, check out these ideas!