Inside Entertainment Suggestions for 11 Year Old Party...

Let them make pizza. My teen aged son recently went to a girls house with mixed sexes and when i asked how it was he said fun. I asked what he did and he said actually we made pizza it was fun. LOL
everyone loves pizza.

I have hosted parties for the 10 children in my family with their friends. It is always fun trying to come up with interesting ideas. 11 is a interesting age. They don't want any of the "baby" things but they are still too young for some other things.

DVD games are great. Have you looked into "Scene It"? There are several different versions of this game. Find the one which appeals most to your neice.

We enjoy games like "Scattergories", "Pictionary", "Charades", "Scrabble". We like board games like "Life" and "Pay Day". We like card games UNO (tournament style-we play on teams or in groups to accomodate the large numbers of people with four decks going at the same time). It is so much fun having different groups of four to five each in different areas of the livingroom doing games.

Sometimes I put time limits on the games and the best of all the games wins the prize at the end of the day. We just keep score where we are and add everything up at the end.

Hope these ideas will be useful to you.

a face/body art paint kit is nice to have at a party for this age group, also a scavenger hunt, if space permits. When my daughter turned 10 I had the same problem: I couldn't use the backyard b/c of all the rain, so we were indoors, and it went pretty well with the clown/magician/face painter lady, plus freeze dance, hot potato, and fun dance music with a disco light ball.

Mad Libs, a movie, freeze dancing. Hope that helps!

Hi K.,
The post below offers great suggestions for little kids but not for 11 and 12 year old middle school students. Pick up a version of Scene-it, and also get some good dance music - at this age, they will do group dances like the Macarena and cha cha slide. Find a local teenager to do some fun and age appropriate activities with them. I don't know what she had planned for food, but they could make their own individual pizzas with a variety of toppings to choose from and also make their own sundaes as dessert with a lot of toppings - this way, the food becomes an activity too.
Good luck!

Should could try renting a tent,

or buying one at walmart.

make sure to have music, Videos, video games,

They can decorate their own cupcakes,
make sandwiches, chips etc.

maybe have some party hats ( not the baby kids but perhaps top hats and things)

make sure she times the activities so they aren't bored,
and perhaps has a prize for the winners.

< All the suggestions below are also very good

M

Games, games, games. Have some structure so they don't get into trouble. Outburst Junior is a great group game (boys vs girls). Even something as simple as hot potato or a cool scavenger hunt. (hiding clues around the house and teams have to try to get to the treasure first)

If you are really adventurous you could do some crafts like decorating tshirts or pillowcases with fabric markers. Boys actually like the crafts too.

Best of luck.

One of my favorite birthdays I attended involved an indoor scavenger hunt. My friends mom put us in teams. Each team got a ball of yarn that had been twisted around things (each color went a different way). The yarn went under beds, through banisters and eventually ended in one room where there was a prize waiting for each group. We were around 11 or 12 at this birthday. It was a race to see who could finish first with all of their yarn. The whole house looked like a spider web of yarn and you had to untwist your yarn and bring it with you to the end. The whole thing took 10 to 15 minutes because they literally twisted the yarn around everywhere (it went upstairs and downstairs multiple times). It was a blast.

The other thing they did was a blindfolded contest where one at a time we were blindfolded and brought into the kitchen where our hands were put in bowls of things and we had to guess what they were. I think they had spaghetti with sauce (felt like a brain), olives (felt like eyeballs), etc. The teams that did the best won a prize. While the other teams were waiting to be blindfolded, we were given a crossword puzzle or some paper game like that (most correct answers got a prize).

One other fun game I thought of I've seen on the Ellen show. It's blindfolded musical chairs. You'd have to break the group up in groups and then have the winners from each group compete in the final show down. Ellen has some good games that you could recreate in your home for virtually no money and could be fun for kids this age. Check out her website. I'm sure she has them listed there.

Good luck!

how about some oldtime favorites. get a couple of blind folds and make a pin the ??? on the ??? game, could be pin the tail on the donkey, make it the donkey off of shrek, or whatever your childs favorite character is. get a post and then just make a copy of a tail for the donkey, i think he is just called donkey, of it is cars, maters lights or mcqueens tire, or even a picture of your child and have them pin on her nose or pigtail or use your imagination, but a take off from this would be neat, and we hired a clown and the clown did balloon artistry and magic for the kids. they had a ball.
and the kids got to take home balloon pets.
she loved it and we got pictures of the fun.

good luck

Tell her to go to the craft store and pick up some jewelry making kits. They dont' cost much, are pretty easy to do and will keep the girls busy for a couple of hours and....they have something at the end!