Fun Social Distancing Kids Birthday Celebration Ideas
Hosting a kids birthday celebration in 2020 is nothing like it used to be. This year, kids’ birthday party plans look a lot different than they have their whole lives. Lately, there’s been no classroom to bring cupcakes to share with classmates. Friends are safely contained in their own homes.
If you’re truly social distancing, there’s no birthday party venue, invitations, and in many cases, a lot fewer presents. Younger kids and toddlers may not remember enough to compare against last year, but you better believe your school-aged kids are going to notice. Some kids will understand and roll with social distancing birthdays. But even still, as a parent, I can’t help myself as I try to create positive experiences and awesome memories for my kids’ birthday celebrations.
Make this year’s social distancing birthday one that stands out for the ages. You can plan all kinds of fun things without a crowd in person to make it all happen. With a little creativity, you can still connect the dots between family and friends for an amazing and memorable birthday. Here are some social distancing kids’ birthday celebration ideas to consider.
Social Distancing Birthday Car Parade
When you can’t party together with your besties, go for the next best thing. A Social Distancing Birthday Parade lets your child see the faces and hear the voices of their pals and close family members. It doesn’t take much time or effort to coordinate and pays major dividends in joy and excitement for your kid’s birthday.
Try these simple steps to plan a social distancing-compliant kids birthday parade.
- Create a Facebook event or an Evite and invite anyone local you’d want to invite to a birthday car parade. Set any ground rules, such as no contact, everyone stays in their cars, whether you will allow gifts or not, etc.
- Include the details – address, rain or shine, etc., and send out the invitations.
- Gather creative yard decorations to make it very festive. Consider kids birthday garden flags, big signs, birthday yard signs, and more.
- Use things you already have, too. Tie or tape streamers to the trees. Sidewalk chalk your driveway with a special happy birthday message. Create large signs wishing a very happy birthday.
- Set up lawn chairs or camp chairs for your family to sit on during the parade. Tape or tie balloons to the chairs for the birthday girl or birthday boy, or for all of the chairs.
- Bring out snacks and drinks to enjoy a little extra time outside if it’s nice.
- Take lots of photos and video.
- Don’t forget to thank everyone who came to your kids birthday parade!
Kids’ Birthday Yard Decorations
Spruce up your yard for the social distancing birthday celebration. Quick and easy decorations can go a long way to making a huge visual impact for your child and parade cars. A birthday garden sign can be the perfect starting point.
My daughters love unicorns, so that is the birthday theme we selected. We already had a garden flag stand (for a Philadelphia Eagles flag), but this flag we ordered did not fit. It was still so beautiful and perfect, so we used a dry-cleaning hanger to connect the flag to the stand.
Honk It’s My Birthday Yard Signs can be a great way to encourage some attention for your little ones. You can find lots of birthday signs and themes to decorate your yard for a special kids birthday.
You might also enjoy a yard full of flamingos, custom yard signs, or any reusable decor. If the weather is nice, you could also invest in an inflatable animal sprinkler, like the giant unicorn. It would certainly be a memorable part of the kids birthday celebration and something you could use again and again for years to come.
We also put balloons on our mailbox, decorated our driveway with sidewalk chalk, and taped up streamers in our trees. Everything turned out beautiful!
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Homemade Snow Cones
For my daughter’s 8th birthday, we also made homemade rainbow snow cones. They were delicious! For this you will need a snow cone maker, syrups, and access to ice. We also bought the reusable snow cone cups with snow cone holders. (Ours are now discontinued, but you can find other brands available for purchase.) Anyone with little kids knows these things are worth their weight in gold. No drips and no dropped cones for the win!
We opted for the Hawaiian Shave Ice brand for everything, but our pineapple syrup was canceled on Amazon. Boo! So we found a lemon syrup and that worked out great! I used blue raspberry snow cone syrup, cherry, lemon-lime, and lemon. They were just as delicious as they were beautiful! So easy to make and I highly recommend this for your kids birthday celebration during these tricky social distancing times.
Kids Birthday Slip & Slide and Water Play
If the weather is warm enough, make a splash! Your kids will likely love playing in a sprinkler or better yet, on a slip & slide! Check out the different home water play toys and attractions. You don’t have to shell out the big bucks for a party center this year, so check the budget for an item you can keep and reuse over and over again. You can find racing slip & slide, bounce slide with water, and so many more fun ways to play and spray this summer.
Thanks to your creative parenting, your kids birthday is sure to be memorable and fun despite social distancing requirements. You may not be able to have a party now. Maybe not even this fall. You can surely plan one in the future, though. And for now, these ideas can help to tide you over!
By the way, if you have a Frozen fan in the house, be sure to check out our Frozen Birthday Party Food Ideas!
