Every year since 2001, we’ve been knee-deep in the joys (and chaos!) of holiday class parties. After two and half decades, we’ve collected invaluable insights to help make class parties fun and manageable. In this episode, we’re sharing our top 10 tips for hosting a successful class party that keeps kids engaged without the chaos.

If you’re someone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by trying to entertain 25 energetic kids, this episode is for you! We’re sharing practical advice for planning, organizing, and running a party that’s enjoyable for kids, stress-free for you, and appreciated by teachers.

Highlights from the Episode:

[00:00] - Tradition Spotlight on half birthdays

[00:04:43] - Communication is Key

[00:10:34] - Deal with the Details in Advance

[00:17:07] - Keep it Simple

[00:23:51] - This week’s Get A Headstart Tip for

[00:24:30] - What’s on our to-do lists this week

[00:27:01] - Our Nice Lists

Resources mentioned:

• Oriental Trading Valentines
• Target Valentines
• Mindware Valentines
• Paper Source Valentines
• Grab The Holiday Headstart Playbook
• Take the Holiday Profile quiz
• Follow on Instagram @theholidayheadstart 
• Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! 

If you enjoyed this episode, you'll like these too:

• Teacher Approved Podcast Episode 33
• Teacher Approved Podcast Episode 34
• Teacher Approved Podcast Episode 96

More about the Holiday Headstart:

Do you want to make the holidays magical and memorable but life gets in the way and things end up feeling stressful instead of special? You’re in the right place. Co-hosts Emily and Heidi are two sisters and former elementary school teachers who have cracked the code on how to keep up with all the annual holidays, events, and day-to-day to-dos. 

They’ve learned how to bring their experience and planning in the classroom into their personal lives - and now they want to share their best tips with you. Tune in weekly to learn how to work just a little at a time so the days that you look forward to most don’t get sacrificed to the busyness of daily life. They’ll talk holiday planning (hello, Christmas!), traditions, and ordinary days too…because those should feel just as significant!

And this week we have a favorite tradition from Emily. Emily, why don't you tell us about your half birthdays?

All we do is I pick up a cake from the store and I cut it in half and I put out enough birthday candles for their birthday plus I push one in. Mostly into the cake. So it looks like a half candle and then I, they get one small present. And I do mean small, like, $10 20 at the most. If there's something I wanna sneak in for a half birthday gift,

or a gift that was left over from Christmas. Oh, that frequently happens, especially with my son whose half birthday is early in January. His is almost always left over from Christmas. Then we just get together, like with the fam, and sing happy half birthday to you. And Blow out the 11 and a half candles or however many it is and open the present and ta da!

Half birthday achieved. I have wanted to expand this a tiny bit and get a half birthday banner or special candles I have metal Candle holders that have numbers. So you put it into the cake and it's like, you, then you stick the candle into the number on the top.

I don't know if I've used them, but I have them. I got them for Christmas last year, I think. They didn't come with a half and I can't find a half that matches those. Oh, sad. Anyway, that, so I do, I would like to just add a couple more little touches to this, but I'm having a hard time because half birthdays are not really a marketable thing at the scene.

That

Like it was, it was so low key and their expectations are low because of that. So it's just easy. Oh. And I pull out the, you are special plate. So they eat off of that. Oh, yes. Yeah, it's, it's so easy and low key and I just can't recommend it enough. It's a really easy way to like add a little bit of joy and magic in something that's not too hard to keep up.

My, my number one tip, if you want to do it is to set into your calendar, like two weeks before your kids half birthdays, a reminder so that it doesn't sneak up on you. Cause it has snuck up on me before where it's like the day before and I'm like, Oh no. I don't have a gift for that or I haven't picked up a cake or anything like that.

So that would be my tip. Get a reminder a couple of weeks before the half birthdays so you don't forget.

We started out having to do it as teachers, and now Emily is deep into the parent side of things. Oh, yes, I am. And over the years, we have picked up a few handy pointers for helping streamline your plans so that if you're helping with a class party, you can focus on managing the kids and not pulling out your hair.

Yes.

But check out episodes 33, 34, and 96 if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of class parties. Today,

And by a successful class party, we mean fun, but contained. Yes, we sound like the party police, but putting some boundaries around the excitement prevents your party from ending in tears for you or the children.

So if you can keep things from skyrocketing at 10 o'clock in the morning, your teachers will love you forever.

And it's a challenge to get everyone on the same page.

Yeah, sometimes it's the teacher. You're just so busy doing the day to day. It's

So you'd make sure that you have all of that information to start with.

Reply all emails back and forth trying to

And if you are not in charge. All you can do is do what you can with what you have.

We should have like a chair and air

Stations eliminate so many of the hassles that come with planning for a large group experience. Stations keep kids engaged but keep them contained. They help keep everything flowing and they simplify the planning. The only downside is you do need a lot of helpers to run all the stations.

When I taught school, I frequently was the lone adult running my class parties, especially the Valentine's day parties. I've got a lot of people who would come for Halloween, but not so much for Valentine's day. Anyway, it's so crazy. I know. I just made sure that the activities I planned for each station were activities that students could do independently.

And I was teaching second graders, so if they can do it, any. where you can handle it. Things like matching games, simple crafts, a bin of seasonal picture books. Those are all festive activities that don't need adult guidance, but they still feel exciting for the kids.

And that is our third tip for planning a successful class party. Minimize waiting time. This

That's part of the fun but a lot of kids Don't have that investment and they check out really quickly if they are not actively participating in what's happening right their kids It's just what they do

They don't want to feel out of control, even if it is a party. So, do what you can to plan games and activities that allow for, okay, this is a teacher term, ongoing participation instead of eventual participation. At the very least, do what you can to avoid having kids waiting longer than maybe a minute

at a

time.

To partition all the supplies and cut out little pieces in advance. Then you can just hand one set to each kid and not have to manage materials on top of trying to manage hyper kids. And it's also a good idea to

Oh, bless. Yeah, she was so excited and it was. Such a hassle for me, . I ended up having to get out like multiple glue guns to help her because things weren't working like she was envisioning and all of the kids' projects were falling apart and they couldn't do a lot of the work themselves. It was a lot

So avoid

I've noticed at a lot of parties I help out, the kids are leaving with unfinished crafts because the parent didn't realize this could not be done in that time frame. So another reason to practice it out in advance.

Ideally, we would say, shoot for about 10

And I arrived at this total by timing my students during class parties to figure out the best length of time. So I found that kids needed at least 8 minutes at a station to really get into what was happening. And then they did a great job staying engaged until about 11 minutes.

After that, they would slowly get more loud and more off task minute by minute. And by 15 minutes, they were pretty checked out. So if you get a say shoot for 10 to 12 minutes, if not, and you're assigned a station for 15 or maybe more minutes, you might have more like planning to seven minute activities than trying to stretch something like.

Pin the nose on the witch for 15 minutes.

So I'd be like, Hey, um, the kid next to you, what's that kid's name? Or, um, you down there, it's your turn. It could not be more confusing to try and run a station with kids and not know what their names are.

So, if you have to, you could bring some adhesive labels, and then just, as the kids come to your station, they could write their name on the label. You know, it takes about 30 seconds, but it really does make things run much more smoothly.

I'm like, just bring your own labels. They never have them provided, so I should just bring them. Our seventh tip is another teacher secret, and that is to have an attention signal. An attention signal is a cue to get kids to pay attention to what you're saying. If you're heading up the class party and will be the person directing things, you can find out what the teacher's attention signal is and use it to get kids attention before you give directions.

Wait until the kids are actually paying attention before you start giving directions,

And this is where you can have some fun. And you maybe don't need the teacher's set attention signal when you're dealing with a small group, you can have some fun with this. There are lots and lots of seasonal prompts online. So you could just look around for like seasonal attention signals and you'll get some fun ideas.

The idea is that you say something and the kids stop what they're doing. Say the response and then wait quietly

But if you're doing something active, particularly if the kids will be spread out around the space, an attention signal, even a clap or a chime can be very handy. All right, let's move on to

But I promise you, having been on the teacher's side of that, most of that food goes untouched. It's a lot of time and a lot of money. When really the kids can be happy with just a paper cut full of popcorn.

You don't need balloons and photo props and tie dyeing t shirts in order to make it memorable. Bingo! Building with gumdrops and toothpicks and playing a roll of candy game are all simple surefire winners.

They don't get enough of that. One of my class's all time favorite party activities was building with a pack of 100 solo cups. So during that station time, they could just build whatever they wanted. I gave them the cups. They just went at it. Um, It was the hit of our 100th day party. Everyone loved that one so much.

But then After we did that a couple of times, I just let them do whatever they wanted with the cups to build. I mean, I didn't let them go crazy or anything, but the open endedness of that, that group was the most engaged and we easily filled the time. There wasn't any like, oh, we're done, but it's not time to rotate or we didn't finish.

It could just perfectly fill the time. So I highly recommend those open ended activities.

back

up plan.

This is such a problem. Mm hmm. So let's say you're doing cookie decorating for a station, which is a great station, but some kids will completely decorate and eat their cookie in 10 minutes. But a lot of kids will not have even started eating cause they're individually putting sprinkles on, you know? Yep.

So having a paper plate or a Ziploc bag for them so that they can put their unfinished food on their desks. will just help out

It stains everything. It's really hard to decorate with the kids get frustrated and it makes just the biggest most disgusting mess. And I find that those are the cookies I see that the kids decorate, but don't eat because it does not look appetizing. So I would just say stay far away from the decorating kits.

If you can, if you want to do cookie decorating. Yes.

Well. Now it's time for our 10th tip, or maybe our 12th tip, because we just gave you those two bonus cookie tips. You've made it to the end of your 10 minute activity. Now you need to save the last minute of the rotation to clean up and reset the station.

So set your timer to go off a minute before you want to rotate. So for example, if you're doing 12 minute rotations. Set a time for 11 minutes, and then when that timer beeps set another timer for one minute. During that one minute, instruct the kids to straighten up their station, you know, reset everything.

They can return any of their papers or their crafts or their uneaten cookies to their desks. With my students, once things were tidy, I told them to stand up in their station and look at me, and that was the signal to me that they were ready to rotate. And then once that one minute timer beeped, Everyone is just all ready to move on to the next station.

Yeah, that's especially tricky if you've

Alright, we threw a lot at you, but being able to smoothly manage a large group of excited kids does take a lot of planning, but I promise that you have got this. Remember our 10 tips, 10 plus tips? So one, communicate clearly. Two, plan stations that the kids can rotate through. Three, minimize that waiting around time.

Four, have the little details managed in advance. Five, shoot for 8 to 11 minute stations. Six, have name tags for the kids. Seven, use an attention signal. Eight, Remember, it doesn't have to be big to be fun, nine, plan a fast finisher activity, and ten, leave the last minute of each rotation for

And if you want even more of our best tips, because believe it or not, there's a lot more we could say about class parties, check the show notes for a link to our teacher approved podcast episodes.

We will link to some of our favorite places in the show notes, but we love the Valentines from Oriental Trading, Target. Mindware paper source. And of course, Amazon has a ton. There's just nothing worse than getting to February 12th and not finding any Valentine's in stock that your kid is actually excited to hand out.

Yep. Okay. Emily, let's share what we are working on this week as a way to keep ourselves accountable and to give you some ideas of what you can do in advance for your own celebrations. We are sharing what we're working on this week. Emily, what's on your to do list?

and I'm excited to say that I already have my kids Valentines that they will need for their classroom exchanges. Bought them weeks ago, like the first week of January. As soon as they were available to get from Target, I got them. I'm so proud of myself. That is awesome. I'm going to get the Valentines decor out this week too and start prepping for Secret Cupid, which I think we're going to talk about in next week's episode.

What are you working on? Heidi?

I'm excited because I, got smart this time, and I made a list of what I want to do on each holiday. Because in the past, what I would do is it would be a holiday, and I'd be like, oh yeah, I need to do something. And then I would spend the whole time trying to come up with

what to do.

It was a big waste of time.

I'm going to do that. My I'm doing my holiday this weekend too. So maybe setting up my list will be part of my holiday

Emily, what made it on your nice

I don't have to do that. So we did take the ornaments off a couple of weeks ago because when I look at my tree, knowing it's going to be put away soon, sometimes seeing the ornaments reminds me that I have like a big to do list item still to do. So we did take all the ornaments off. But I have left it up with just the lights and I just love it.

But I am ready to take it down now, so it's nice that I can take it down when I'm ready to. It, like, that's just, like, liberating. The rules are made up, you guys. Yes. Well, I love that. What's on your nice list, Heidi?

I don't know if that's allowed.

Not only is the tree still up, it's still almost fully decorated. I have started a little bit, but not much. And I have really, really been a hard on myself about not having this finished by now, like big existential spiral crisis. But this week I had a big aha that this stuff isn't out because I'm incapable of falling through or lazy or whatever other mean thing I'm telling myself, the stuff is out.

Cause. Dang, I am busy trying to catch up on work right now. Yep. So not only is that taking a huge chunk of time, it's taking all of my energy. So when I am starting to spiral, I'm trying to ask myself, like, when, when should you have had the time to do all those tasks then? And that's been a pretty good wake up call because I can't invent more hours in the day and energy is also pretty limited.

So. Yep. Now, if you are someone who doesn't have an inner critic, this maybe sounds like. A minor issue, but it's been a very big step for me to recognize the spiraling and the beating myself up that I'm doing and trying to stop those critical thoughts. So I feel like instead of being critical, I'm going to be nice to myself and put myself on the nice list.