School aged kids with summer birthdays...

[denvergal]

what do you do about birthday parties? our schools are on a track system and i have to decide which track i want for kindergarten next year. my ds has a late summer birthday but i don't like the track that fits his birthday into it. if you have kids that have birthdays when their other school friends are off of school, how have you handled the parties?

[egoldber]

It's hard. The good thing is I don't really feel like I need to invite the whole class. But the bad thing is that soooo many people are gone (vacations, camps) for her August birthday. I can generally only rely on about 2/3 of the kids we invite being able to come.

Usually we invite about 5 school friends and about 5 neighborhood friends and end up with about 6-7 kids total.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Agreeing with Beth- it's nice because there isn't as much pressure to invite the whole class. We have always been able to pick and choose who we want there and can keep it small. I haven't had poor attendance because of vacations but I also haven't done big parties except last year (turn out was good). Last year was the 1st time we had a big party so I did things a bit differently. In past years I had sent out "save the date" cards/ emails farther out than I would send invites (like 1-2 months ahead of time) so I could try and get his party on their schedule before it filled up with other things. This year will be weird because his b-day is the last day of school (school goes really late) so I'm thinking about my choices now. I imagine we will stick with picking and choosing who gets invited and distributing invites outside of school.

Beth

[Tondi G]

My DS has an early July birthday and last year we passed out invites to his entire class. I got one rsvp that they were going to be out of town and heard nothing from the rest... not one kid from school showed up! Worked out fine between the kids we know outside of school and neighborhood kids but I felt bad that not ONE kid from his class showed up!

This year we are hoping to have a birthday party at a destination.... water park or maybe bowling, instead of home so we will have to keep the guest list to a minimum. I hope to get addresses from the kids he is friends with in school as opposed to handing them out this year. I wonder if his invite just got lost in the shuffle with all the papers the kids were taking home at the end of the year?!

[SnuggleBuggles]

I wonder if his invite just got lost in the shuffle with all the papers the kids were taking home at the end of the year?!

You know, it's been so long since ds's party last year that I am fuzzy on specifics but this rings a bell. I remember following up with my RSVPs the week before the party and there were 2 families that didn't know about the party. I am willing to bet that the invites got lost in the shuffle. I sent them out a few days before the end of the year but I remember that day the kids came home with a lot of their papers and projects.

Beth