"Birthday Party Ideas For Middle Schoolers" - Transcript

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K: Hey everyone, I'm Kim Caifano, aka The Middle School Mommer. I'm here to help you connect with your child during this stage and get you equipped to parent them well. I am very happy to have my guest today, Clark Janssanti. Clark is first and foremost a recent high school graduate and he is a camp founder, let alone youth camp counselor. Our family has gotten to know him in a variety of ways. Our son went to the camp that he founded and runs and deals with all these adults. Primarily, of course, he deals with children both elementary and middle schoolers. And, I've gotten the chance to observe him in action with middle schoolers and you just have a knack for it. You just have a knack to interact with them and make them feel loved and special. So, I kind of wanted to pick his brain on a few different things. Our first topic today is actually going to be a topic that I know is pretty highly searchable. It is for moms of middle schoolers who are starting to look for birthday party ideas and don't necessarily want to spend seven hundred dollars to go to a Chicago Bulls game or whatever. And, you've run a couple of birthday parties? 

C: Yeah!

K: That's actually the point of this interview: to kind of go through what if a mom wants to have a simple party at home and what are a couple of ideas that they can do? What are some things that you've done or that you have ideas to do in the future if you were to get hired?

C: Well, I think the best thing to first think about is what does your middle schooler enjoy? Like if they are more of an athletic type or if they're more of an indoor video games type. And when you figure out what your child enjoys, that kind of directs what path I would encourage you to go down. For example, if your child is really into outdoors and athletics, there's no need to go to an indoor nice sports facility and rent it out. You know you have parks everywhere and those are open fields for anyone to use. I think the easiest thing to do is just to invite all your child's friends, have them meet up at the park for an hour and a half,  grab a couple of bases, a kickball, a football, and just play simple games. Kids have fun when they are together. All you need to do is set up a simple activity and the kids will do the rest.

K: It's so true and I feel like sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves that we need to entertain them for that whole hour and a half, right? It's so true that when they come together, they kind of make the fun happen. That's the time the party doesn't even go the way you think it's going to go. Kind of  have a loose structure. So, I think that's great too: the reminder that it doesn't always have to be at your house. It can be at a million parks around and just go and rent out a facility. At the parties that you've run, have you done them in homes or have you done them at parks?

C: All parks! I've done a couple in the summertime and then also in the winter time. Sometimes you think that if your child has a winter birthday, how can you still have a cheap party without having to go to a place and rent it out? Well, you know, snow is just as fun as grass is. You can set up easy snowman building competitions or sledding competitions. If you just have a bunch of cardboard boxes you can see who can make the best sled out of a bunch of cardboard boxes. You can have different things like which sled goes the fastest, which looks the best, and which sled can hold the most amount of people and go down. There are a bunch of different things that you can do in the snow that are just as fun as it is in the summer.

K: That is a very good point. We have a child with a February birthday and then Carston's is in March. He's not middle school yet, but he has wanted to do a scavenger hunt. I've been like, yeah why not? It's February 6th but we can have a scavenger hunt in the snow! And, any of us midwest people are hardy enough to go. It's even more challenging to hide stuff in the snow. So, any other thoughts? Do you bring back-up? Especially if you have a group of 10 or more, do you bring a little bit of help or is it just kind of you and the parents running it?

C:  I bring friends or usually my my younger brother is like my sidekick. His name is Trent and he does a lot with me. When I've ran stuff in the past I'll usually bring Trent if not a friend. But, it's always fun to bring more people because it's a party, you know? Everyone's here to have fun and it's really simple. So, yeah I usually bring someone else.

K: I think the one thing we did too for our daughter's birthday party, she was probably like 13 at the time, we hired someone with no experience with face painting whatsoever. But, I bought a bunch of face paint and we had a couple activities going on and then whenever there was a lull, I had her pull people in and just do some face paint. I just gave her like three simple things they could choose from and that was one of the favorite parts of the party. So, again, it doesn't always have to be this expensive, grand, big thing. I think you're proving the point. So, any other ideas?

C: Well, going away from the outdoors, athletic things kids love video games. It is their birthday party, so even though there may be limits on video games it's their birthday party. Why not have a big video game party? Most families have at least one console of their own and you can just have kids set up an easy tournament of whatever game they're playing. If it's a competitive game you can do a tournament in that. Or, if it's Minecraft they could want to do something more artistic in Minecraft like: who can make the best looking house? And you could have only five minutes to make it, or something as simple as that makes it fun. All kids for the most part love video games and it's very simple. The thing with that is that it's very easy to control because it's not running around everywhere. Rather, they're just sitting on a couch with a controller in their hand and it's very easy to make sure everyone's not running into a wall. 

K: I think yes, and destroying the house. I think that's half of why moms take it elsewhere once they reach kids of a certain age because they're like, “I don't want my house destroyed!”. The last somewhat big party we did at our house was a Nerf gun party and it could have been much worse. I mean the house could have been totally destroyed, but the main thing was just that we found Nerf gun bullets for the next three years of our life. So, I like the idea of it being controlled and that everybody's gonna be in this room. And, they're pretty much told their entire lives to get off the screen, so one moment to be like, it's video game time, I'm sure all kids would like that. All right, any other ideas?

C: If your child really enjoys art you can even have a real simple artist party. All you really need is markers and paper. It doesn't have to be anything big. You can, you know, go to a pottery place, but kids just love to draw. 

K: Or you just get canvases or whatever!

C: I've only seen that in the backyard so no paint on the floors or anything.

K: So, I'm sensing a theme of getting to know your child. What is your child into? And run with it from there. I have a few ideas too, but I just kind of want to keep asking any more ideas. Let's just keep placing ideas in people's minds. I'll throw on a couple of my own. So, I used to work in a church and I was actually in the communications department. But every once in a while, I would walk through the lobby and be like what is happening here. There would be this lineup of 12 old school bikes, like hot wheel style bikes. And then all this duct tape lined up. And I'm like, “what's about to happen?” And, of course, there was an event planned for later that night where they were all gonna have a race. I think it was called “The Half Nighter” or something. But then they also had these huge bean bag boards. They were probably five feet by four feet and just sometimes it's fun to turn a simple game into something ginormous. Keep it simple, but just make it bigger and there's something to that as well.

C: Another great one is if it's a hot summer day, a water gun fight. With water gun fights, have each child bring their own water gun. That way you don't have to provide anything. The kids just come to the party with their own water gun. Maybe you throw in water balloons at the end after the fight and you have water balloons made and it's just a free-for-all.

K: That does remind me, that is something I have in one of the previews or guides that I've created. I had a friend that was really worried and freaking out. I think she had a child turning 12 or 13 and they were on a really tight budget and she just got one of the inflatable kid pools,  filled it with water, and got a bunch of Nerf water guns. I feel like I'm promoting Nerf. I'm not getting paid by Nerf, by the way. But, she had a bunch of nerf guns and then totally ended it with water balloons. I wanted to join in when I saw the pictures! It was like this eight by ten pool filled with water guns and water balloons and then she just let them have at it. It was a two-hour party just with that. So, that was another one. I'm gonna wrap up this interview because apparently we have somebody at the door. Thank you for your time, and we're gonna wrap this one up and I'm gonna go see who's at the door.

C: Sounds good!

K: Join me next time on my next Youtube channel edition. Thanks!