What Are Some Old-Fashioned Interactive Party Games for a Kids' Party?

Do kids even play regular games at parties anymore? Or is it just a case of seeing who can gain mastery over the controls of the video game console? Party games used to be how kids socialized with each other in what is, for most, an alien setting: SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE.

Party games for kids of a certain young and tender age should still be innocent, simple and fun. When you are hosting a party, it helps to have a theme. This way the same game that was played at a party last month can have a little Eng------------lish put on it to make it different. All of the following games can be adapted to suit your specific theme. Or at least most of them can since at this point in the process of writing this article I haven't yet chosen the games I want to alert party planning parents to.

Start the party with your scavenger hunt. Or, in the specific case of a pirate theme party, the treasure hunt. If you are not throwing pirate-theme party for the kid, work the theme into what the are looking for on their scavenger hunt. Be ruthless in adhering to your party's theme, but completely open to how expansive that theme is. For instance, if there are still any kids outside Texas who enjoy a cowboy theme, your scavenger hunt should possibly include little toy horses, a sheriff's badge and even one of a cheap John Wayne DVD of his western movies if that's what you happen to have hanging around.

A backwards party is one in which the kids come with their clothes on backwards and the rest of the theme is all things backwards. Do they still make potato sacks? If so, an old-fashioned potato sack relay race (so youse don' needs to buy lots of sacks) can be held with one huge and glaring difference: the kids must hop backwards across the yard to reach their partying teammates.

Grab an old-fashioned hat if you have one or your baseball cap if you don't. Hand out an index card to each kid and a pencil with instructions to draw upon the card a self-portrait image. Place half the completed cards into the hat and have the kids whose cards did not go into the hat draw them draw them out. This is a great idea when you are hosting a party for you kid that includes friends from two different spheres who may not know each other.

Relay charades is a kids' party game that can be played outside or inside. Separate into two teams and place two hats-or caps, geez, is that the only kind of hat American men wear anymore?--filled with words that related to your theme. The first person in line on the right or left picks out a card and races across to the teammate opposite. That kid must then correctly guess the charade being acted out before he or she can dip into the hat and come up with another word. She or he will race across to her or his teammate and act out another word. The first team to complete their charades is the winner. You can come up with your own rules if you get some weird kid who has never seen Finding Nemo or watched SpongeBob SquarePants.

Tag is a party game every kid either loves or hates, depending on how often they get tagged and become IT. Those partygoers who hate tag may just be swayed by the party English you put on this version of tag. Actually, this is a version of freeze tag. The big difference is that kids who are touched don't freeze in the position they were in when touched. Instead, they freeze in a position of activity related to your party's theme (DID I MENTION THAT ALL THESE GAMES ARE ADAPTABLE TO THEMES?) In order to unfreeze, someone must guess what activity they were frozen in. Needless to say, this version of thematic freeze tag is another team activity and only someone from the frozen person's team can guess the activity for freezing. As for other rules, well, hey, it's tag. And the best tag is the free-for-all where this is no goal, but having fun.