Since the pandemic’s onset, people have been forced to stay indoors and reduce human contact with other people. That means no gatherings like children’s birthdays! Celebrations had to be low-key and done only online. Fortunately, strict quarantine regulations have let up in certain localities.
How to Celebrate a Fun Child’s Birthday Despite the Pandemic
As a parent, you can use these looser social distancing rules to give your child the birthday they deserve. But if gathering your child’s friends and little cousins is impossible, you can still make their birthday fun and enjoyable!
Personalized Birthday Invitations
What birthday celebration is complete without birthday invitation cards? While it is more common nowadays to send electronic invitations or invite people through chat, text, or call, having physical cards makes it more personal.
You can choose fun, ready-made birthday invitation designs but stamp them with love. For example, you can buy engraved stamps online and add a personal touch to your stamp. You can handwrite the invitee’s name and other details like date, time, and location. You can fill in the blanks together with your child too! They may have some ideas about how they want to personalize the invitation cards. You can have a great bonding time, and your child can exercise creativity.
For your safety, keep your guest list short and only invite people who live close to your area. Choose an open-space venue with many floor areas so people can maintain an appropriate distance from one another. Finally, keep your event short and sweet.
Even if you are planning an online-only event, you can still send invitations through mail to make it more memorable. If you have lost your friend’s or family’s address, you can find people online to keep those stamps working.
House Cleaning and Sanitizing
Ensuring every guest’s safety, house cleaning, and sanitizing are necessary. You can do this a day before to reduce the stress on your birthday. Your everyday cleaning supplies will do the trick!
You may also want to use some extra-strong germ- and virus-killing disinfecting products. This is especially important for surfaces where pathogens are most likely to stick to and live on longer.
Providing Sanitizers for Guests
When your guests enter your home, you can direct them to a disinfecting footbath and sink and ask them to soak the soles of their shoes, wash their hands, and sanitize. This may seem like a lot of work, but this is for every guest’s health and safety, especially the little ones. You can provide each guest (or parent) with a sanitizer as a party favor or place sanitizers in strategic areas in your home. This way, they can easily sanitize when they need to.
Making Social Distancing Fun
Kids will want to hug and play with each other in close quarters. But this may not be a good idea. Instead, you can implement social distancing and make it fun too! You can develop games that reward children for sticking to the distancing rules. Or you can play games where everyone involved can play while maintaining the proper distance to keep children healthy.
For example, you can play a game like a freeze dance party that lets children’s boundless energy out. Players can maintain the required distance from each other. The birthday celebrant can be the dance leader and the participants’ friends. As the game’s name implies, the dance leader has to bust some moves. When they do, everybody else has to do the same. And when they freeze, everybody has to freeze too! The one caught still dancing will have to do a penalty like jumping jacks.
Of course, everyone must keep their masks on when they are not eating or drinking. This will be uncomfortable, but you, as a host, must reiterate this.
Sanitizing Gifts
The highlight of every child’s birthday party—the gifts! Guests may bring presents for the birthday celebrant. The presents may be wrapped nicely in gift wrappers or gift bags. You may ask your child to be patient while you sanitize the wrapper for the former. You can also ask your child to sanitize their hands, or even better, wash them first.
Once the gift is out, you can go over them with a slightly damp cloth with alcohol if possible. You can also use a sanitizer spray. This way, your child can enjoy their gifts without you worrying about their health.
Birthdays during a Pandemic Can Still Be Fun
You read that right! Just because there are still social distancing requirements does not mean birthday parties (or other events, for that matter) have to be solitary affairs. As long as you ensure that guests follow protocols, you can have small get-togethers to celebrate. After all, socializing is important for every child, making them happy to be around friends.