Member Questions

Some schools have it in their manual to invite the entire class when handing out invites "in school" but if you send them to each child's home, I think the "whole class" is ruled out and you invite your childs friends. I think you do what is best for you and your son financially and personally. Doing things out of pressure is never a good feeling.

We did a few parties with all the boys in the class - Kindergarten, First and Second. Most people in our school did. When he got older we took 3 boys to Great Adventure (things like that). See what everyone else does. Chuck E Cheese is a good, inexpensive party for a crowd.

A good rule of thumb is to invite 1 child for each year old your child is. We've never, ever done a whole class (some people do, some don't in our schools), although a couple of times we did rent our town pool ($75) for an hour and invite 10 or 15 kids when my oldest was in middle school. The kids seem to have more fun in small groups, especially when very young--i think for alot of children the chaos is very intimidating. The younger ones don't really give a hoot who's there and who's not there, just as long as they have some friends there and they are having a PARTY!! Our kids have never suffered any social consequences--both are happy, with lots of friends and invites--my advice is to keep it sane-small, manageable and affordable. I think you'll find most parents feel the same and are more than happy about smaller parties!

I have seen the whole class thing done, but it is rare in our school. My daughter usually invites around 10-15 of her friends and 75% show up, her friends are scattered among all different classes. There are people in her class she doesn't talk to outside of the classroom, I don't think you would invite them. This is how we have done it since kindergaten...she is now in 5th grade.