Fun Birthday Party Ideas for 3 or 4-Year-Olds
Regarding kids’ birthday parties, think of the THEME as the SUN that all the planets orbit around. A theme is always important!
Picking a great theme means you will have a FABULOUS party for your children and their friends to remember!
These themes are the most popular and fun birthday party ideas for 3 or 4-year-olds: Dinosaurs or Unicorns and princesses’ or Pirates.
See some awesome ideas for these parties below.
Party 1: Dinosaur Day! Or Unicorn Play!
I have had a couple of Dino parties for my boys and a Unicorn party for my daughter. They are pretty easy themes to go with. There are more than enough items to gather at dollar stores or Party stores to make it an easy setup.
Supplies
Make sure to grab your Dino or Unicorn paper plates, cups, and napkins!
Cake
Save money on a cake by getting a huge sheet cake from Sam’s Club for roughly $30!
You can pick a dinosaur or unicorn picture to add to the cake. I also make sure to get some small dino or unicorn toys or candles to add to the cake for more decoration.
Activities and Games
Bounce
When it comes to activities, we like to rent bounce houses or water slides, if it is warm. Many bounce house rental places have a dino-themed bounce house or water slide to pick from. If you cannot find a dinosaur one, you can easily use a jungle-themed one.
A unicorn bounce house is a bit harder to find, but you can rent a plain-colored baby blue or pink bounce house to keep it sweet! These bounce houses will keep guests active and entertained for hours!
Win
To add more fun, a dinosaur or unicorn-themed piñata is easy to score. I try to make sure the pinata is not just junk candy, but also small, themed toys in there, gummy fruit snacks, etc.
Parents will thank you for this!
Play
More fun for Dino’s is a dino dig in a sandbox. You can add fossils that you simply buy on Amazon, with plastic buckets and shovels from the dollar store. A Unicorn craft could be added for the girls to have additional fun. Buy some unicorn headbands for the girls to decorate!
Goodie Bag Ideas
Goodie bags are always popular, but I prefer to do something different. I feel a goodie bag can sometimes just be more useless junk for my kids, and I do not want it. With our dino and unicorn parties, we did a dino or unicorn giveaway.
My kids had over 50 small dinosaurs so that made it easy. For the unicorns, I just bought a bunch of small ones from Amazon.
We gathered those up, put them in a bin by the front door, and made it an Adopt-A-Dino or Adopt-a-Unicorn station.
To add to the cuteness, we gave each dino and unicorn a name and attached name tags to them.
When the kids leave, they get to take their dino with them and will always remember the special time they have.
Party 2: A Princess or Pirate Party
These two themes are also pretty easy when finding items at the party store. The only thing you have to decide is will your Pirates be Jack Sparrow or Jake and the Never Land Pirates. Also, will your Princess be A total Disney Princess theme or will it be one princess? You must answer these questions first.
Supplies
Once you decide, you can know what type of paper plates, cups, and napkins to buy. Don’t forget the tablecloths!
Cake
And again, a cake at Sam’s is so much cheaper and they will have the Princess and Pirate options. It’s also easy to buy a generic birthday cake, scrape the frosting, add your own, and a princess or pirate cake topper.
Activities and Games
For a Princess Party
Fun activities to add to your Princess party would be, a coronation ceremony for the birthday princess, performed by a real live princess. Of course, you will need to contact a party rental place to order that special lady!
During this time, you could also have a tea party for the little darlings.
They sell paper plates and teacups that match, much cheaper than the real option. Or you could also thrift to find some adorable random teacups! Add some simple cute snacks, some balloons, and drapes and you’ve got yourself the cutest little princess party!
For a Pirate Party
Have the kids do this simple activity with corkscrews.
- Save your wine corks!
- Get some foam paper
- Cut-out Sail shapes
- Rubberband the corks together
- Stick a skewer through all of it!
Adding fun to a pirate party can be pretty easy. Check out these ideas for pirate-themed birthday activities:
- If you have a wooden swing set, add a red flag or a Skelton flag to the top and put some pirate hats and swords out for the kids to play with. Imagine that seeing set it a pirate ship!
- You can also EASILY find a pirate-themed bounce house
- Finding a Real Pirate to attend the party isn’t too difficult either.
- Another cute activity is having the kids “walk to plank.” You can make this by putting down two big cinder blocks about 6 feet away from each other, and a piece of wood over the cinder blocks. One child can get on either side and walk toward each other with a Styrofoam pool noodle. They can “fight to the death” by swatting each other with the noodle.
Whoever falls first, is OUT! Make sure to grab some premade décor from the party store to keep the theme alive and pass out some pirate-themed snacks and drinks!
Remember, Life is a party! Have FUN! A fun birthday party for 3—or 4-year-olds shouldn’t be stressful. Enjoy it with them.
Check out 9 Birthday Traditions to Start Year One
