Best 8th Birthday Party Ideas 2022
If you were about to bang your head against the wall because you can't think what theme to use for your youngster's eighth birthday party, stop. It'll give you a headache, probably damage the wall and you still won't have found a solution to your eighth birthday party idea problem.
Eight is an awkward age all round. Kids of eight are independent, like to do their own thing, and are quite often not too happy about having adults around. They and their friends know everything about everything and can manage perfectly well on their own even at a birthday party or so they think.
Finding the balance between giving them space and keeping them adequately supervised is a fine, but achievable, balance. While celebrating your kid's eighth birthday at the local waterpark might be a tempting idea, it's not recommended at this age. Why? Imagine keeping an eye on ten kids running willy nilly around a crowded place then losing sight of half of them as they disappear up one slide or another. It's an activity that's guaranteed to give you a nervous breakdown.
So you can stay calm and enjoy your kid's birthday celebration as much as they do, Fly By Fun have put together some of the best birthday party themes and ideas for eight year olds. Take a look through them and you're bound to find one that's a perfect match to your youngster's idea of a fun birthday party.
Fantastic 8th Birthday Party Ideas
If you're going to have a group of very energetic eight year olds to deal with, you'll be pleased to discover some great outdoor party ideas here, but, breathe a sigh of relief, they're ones that are a whole lot easier to control without being obvious about it. There's also some super indoor party ideas that will keep any bunch of kids in this age group totally engrossed and thoroughly entertained.
Outdoor 8th Birthday Party Ideas
Party In The Park
Hosting your kid's eighth birthday party in the local park means they and the guests will have plenty of open space to run around in, but you'll still be able to see them at all times.
Most parks have special picnic and barbecue areas which can prove to be the ideal spots for the central focus of the party. Which particular site you choose obviously depends on what type of food you're going to prepare. Doing picnic food is a lot simpler than a barbecue, unless you've got an army of helpers, as you'll have it all prepped before you get there and so will be able to concentrate one hundred percent on activities for the guests.
You don't need to restrict the party activities to sporting games, although they're great fun and rounders, soccer, tug of war, volleyball and soft ball cricket do wear the kids out pretty quick. With a bit of forethought you can turn this eighth birthday party idea into a mini music festival for kids or even make it into a hippy-style festival if you ask the guests to come dressed appropriately.
Tip: If you go for the music festival theme, hippy or not, have things like bubble wands, bubble making packs and giant bubble wands at hand. Parks are the ideal spaces for letting the kids loose with bubble liquids as the grass surface means they won't slip on any spills. A tattoo station, for fake tattoos of course, goes down great with this theme too as does face painting.
NB: It's a good idea to check with the park authorities that you won't be breaking any park rules before holding the party there especially if you're considering having music.
Fun Foam Party
Water and groups of young kids just don't mix unless you have twenty four pairs of eyes and a dozen pairs of hands to supervise them while they're splashing around no matter how shallow the water is. Instead of water start thinking foam and you'll be ready to give your eight year old's birthday party an unexpected wow factor. After all, what kid doesn't love a bubble bath?
No, we're not suggesting you hold your little one’s birthday party in your bathroom. This is a party you'll need a decent sized garden or outside space for. Whether you choose to have several small kids’ paddling pools or one large plastic pool is up to you and also depends on how many kids you're expecting plus how you're going to produce the foam.
You can purchase a small foam machine for well under a hundred dollars. That's a big expense for one-off use so you might want to consider hiring a machine or contracting a foam party specialist to do the tricky bit for you.
Make diving into the foam more fun by wrapping small treasures in waterproof packaging and letting the kids search for them. Soft things like bean bags and mini cuddly toys are best so there's no sharp edges for the kids to stand on.
Tip: When you send out the invites make sure to state that all the kids will need swimwear. They'll need swim goggles to which you can provide or ask the guests to bring theirs with them.
Tip: Search hard enough on the internet and you'll find a couple of serious money saving ways to create foam for this party theme. Youtube videos can be very informative but always be careful about mixing anything wet with electricity. You might want the party to go with a bang, but not quite that sort.
After Dark Glow Party
There's no reason why your kid's eighth birthday party has to be held in the afternoon. It's often difficult, if not impossible, to juggle work and school hours even at weekends. Host this outdoor After Dark Glow party at night and it'll be an instant success.
It's not hard, but can be a little time consuming, to deck out your garden or patio area with hundreds of fairy lights or glow in the dark decorations. It's worth the effort though as it'll turn an ordinary space into something absolutely magical.
If you're hosting a girl's eighth birthday party then this idea combines well with a fairy party especially if you decorate the fairy wings and tiaras with luminous paint or hand out glow in the dark jewellery. For a boy's party glow in the dark shades, wristlets and star wars-style light sabres are amazing.
There are all sorts of glow in the dark party accessories available at minimal cost on the internet. So go for glow in the dark straws, beakers, balloons, and garlands. Whatever will make an impact, but warn the neighbours what's happening or they may well think radioactive aliens have taken over your garden.
Indoor 8th Birthday Party Ideas
Conservation Themed Birthday Parties
At first you may think that these next two conservation themed birthday party ideas sound somewhat boring, think again. They're anything but. By the age of eight, kids know all about the world we live in, often more than we do, and are familiar with terms like conservation and endangered species.
Ocean Themed Party
You don't need any water to host an indoor Ocean themed party so before you start worrying about your floors getting wet, stop. It's not going to happen.
Decorate the room where the party is going to be held in multiple shades of blue and if you can get your hands on one, have as big a map of the world's ocean you can find as a backdrop. Hang colourful tropical fish, crabs, jellyfish, octopus and starfish on strings from the ceiling and create a mini reef from fake coral in one corner.
There are lots of species of endangered marine life that you can add to the ocean conservation party theme like turtles, whales, dolphins, but probably the cutest is the sea otter. Rather than an ocean-related movie, consider showing the kids a National Geographic documentary instead.
While mermaids aren't, as far as we know, an endangered species, Ariel is the ideal party entertainment for this theme as she knows a thing or two about sea life. Aquaman would be great too, but sadly he's busy making a new film and doesn't have time to put in personal appearances at an eight year old's birthday party.
Planet Earth Party
It's simple enough to turn a room, or at least part of it, into a jungle-type scene using fake palm fronds and lots of green balloons. Fake turf looks good as a backdrop or wall hanging when you only want to set up a small area and you can pin pictures of endangered animals or a map of the world on it.
There are, sadly, so many endangered species that you can choose from to add to the jungle theme although not all of them, like polar bears and snow leopards, live in a tropical environment. Mountain gorillas, pandas, tigers, elephants and even some species of sharks are on the threatened list. If your youngster has a favourite then go with that, but if not, it's great to include as many as you can in one form or another. Soft toys or photographs both work well.
Your child and their guests will probably be well aware that the reason creatures like gorillas are on the endangered species list is because of deforestation. While we're not suggesting you fly the entire party out to the Amazon to plant a few trees, what you can do to pique the kids' interest is have a tree planting session.
All you need is a pot filled with soil for each guest and a seed or two. To get those all you have to do is save them from whatever fruit you've been eating. The fastest to grow are cherry and apple. Papaya is good too as you only need one to get enough seeds for everyone.
If you don't feel green-fingered enough to show the kids how to plant seeds and then nurture them until they grow, Fly By Fun has a great gardening entertainer who would be more than pleased to get their hands dirty for you.
Bake and Shake It Party
If you've slipped up and left arranging your little one's birthday party to the very last minute and really don't have time to organise anything, don't feel too bad. Life can, on occasion, be overly busy for whatever reason so it happens to us all at some time or another.
This party theme will get you out of a sticky situation without causing you any stress and no-one will ever know it wasn't planned right from the off. Almost everything you need will already be in your store cupboards. If not, all you'll need to do is make a quick dash to the nearest grocery store.
There's nothing kids love more than pizza. The best thing about this theme is you don't have to do all the preparation because they'll be doing it. If you have pizza bases in the freezer, great. If not, a batch of dough doesn't take long to put together and the kids will have a fantastic time kneading it. It doesn't have to be Masterchef standard although we can help you on that score should you need it.
Once the pizzas are topped and baking in the oven, it's time for some milkshake fun. You will need either beakers with tight fitting lids or plastic jars with screw caps. Half fill the beakers or jars with milk and add a scoop of chocolate or strawberry ice cream to each. Fix the lids on, it's a good idea to double check this part or you could end up with a disastrous mess to clean up.
Play the Taylor Swift song, Shake it off and get the kids to hold their drinks while jumping up and down to the music. By the time the dance party has finished, the pizzas will be ready and the milkshakes will be too. If you're too short of time, then cupcake or cookie decorating both keep the kids happy and amused.
We'd be the first to agree that leaving organising your child's eighth birthday party to the last minute really isn't the best way to go about it. If you just don't have time to dedicate to planning a party, Fly By Fun will be happy to do it for you. We've been Australia's top children's party entertainment company for the last decade. Leave your kid's birthday party in our hands and you'll be leaving it in the hands of experts.
