How to throw an epic festival themed party for kids
Becca Inglis
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Hosting a mini festival party for kids in your home or garden? Take a look at our costume ideas, festival decorations and fun activities to make your own Kidchella.
Everybody loves a festival. Between the amazing music, the quirky costumes, and the anything-goes attitude, they make the perfect getaway for all ages. Not only that, but festivals make a super fun party theme for your kids too!
If you're looking for ideas on how to throw a festival themed party for your kids and their friends, have a look at our tips for creating a memorable boutique festival experience both indoors and outdoors.
Festival party decoration ideas
Think about what kind of festival you want to create in your home. Does it have lots of different stages? A dance music tent? A chill out zone?
Some festival decor essentials include:
- patterned blankets and rugs
- comfy cushions
- colourful bunting and flags
- home-drawn festival poster and banners
- festival signs/map
Decoration ideas for a garden festival party
British festivals are notoriously rainy, so you'll need to make sure there's some cover for your festival party venue.
You could hire a small marquee for your kids and their friends to sit in, pitch your own family-sized tent, or pin together lots of sheets and hang them up to make a blanket fort (a washing line and pegs are helpful for this).
Fill your tent with cushions and rugs (the ones you're okay with getting dirty, or that are machine washable).
Leave plenty of room for your kids to dance too!
Decoration ideas for an indoor festival party
You don't have to be outdoors to put on an amazing festival party.
If you're hosting inside, you could turn every room into a different stage - maybe a rock room, or a hippie room, or a pop music room!
Print out and hang up photos of your kids' dream musicians. If you have a projector, you could project YouTube videos of their live performances too.
Put up some fairy lights and glow in the dark balloons. Get a small strobe light to complete the look.
Festival party games and activities
While it's great fun to just rock out to your favourite tunes, if you want to make your festival themed party even more fun, why not try some of these ideas?
Lip sync battle
Lip syncing is all the rage these days, and your kids will love getting to unleash their inner Billie Eilish at their very own Glastonbury.
Set aside some pre-show time for everyone to prepare. Your kids' friends might want to copy a video of an artist's iconic festival performance, or make up their own dance routine.
When everyone is ready, clear some space for the show. Help everyone form an orderly queue to the performance area.
If any of your kids' friends are feeling stage shy, they could judge the best lip sync instead of performing.
Dance-off contest
Switch on the tunes and get the kids on their feet! It's time to find out who's got the most impressive dance moves.
This contest can be pretty relaxed and informal. Get everyone warmed up by dancing in a circle, then invite them to come into the middle one-by-one and show off their dancing. The dancer who gets the loudest applause wins.
Some kids might find it nerve-racking dancing in front of everyone, so you may want to invite someone who's more confident to go first. You could also allow kids to dance in pairs.
Face painting
Kids of all ages love getting their face painted, and it fits right in with festival fashion too.
Paint everyone's faces to look like funky characters – we suggest a dragon, a pixie or a butterfly – or add some abstract patterns. Remember to add some sticky gems and biodegradable glitter too.
Use this guide to find a face painter in your area, or you could have a go at flexing your own skills with a paint brush.
Just make sure you do a patch test for everyone beforehand to check for allergies, and use a clean sponge for each child. You can find more useful advice on face painting here.
Tie dying
This is an extremely fun but messy activity, so you'll want to make sure you either do this outside or put down loads of newspaper.
Use watered down acrylic paint or order a special tie dying paint kit. You'll need a white t-shirt for each person, which you should wet and wring the water out of before starting.
Use these instructions to make three different tie dye patterns. Once you've folded or scrunched up your t-shirt, use elastic bands to hold in place.
Add your chosen colour paints and leave to seep for a few hours.
Once the paint has soaked in, you can hang the t-shirts up to dry.
Make flower power garlands
Get into the Woodstock hippie spirit with this fun and easy craft activity for kids. You can turn these into necklaces, bracelets or simply hang them up as festival decorations.
You'll need lots some coloured felt, scissors, ribbon, and a hole punch (optional).
First, get kids to draw flower shapes on the coloured felt, then cut them out (for younger kids, get a grown-up to help with the cutting). Next, let the kids hole punch through the middle of each flower (or get a grown-up to make a hole using scissors), then thread the ribbon through. Tie a knot after threading each flower to hold them in place.
Braid your own festival wristbands
Festival wristbands make lovely keepsakes at the end of the weekend. Make sure your kids' friends have their own by showing them how to braid friendship bracelets.
All you need are some different colours of sewing thread and beads for extra decoration.
Keep things simple with a basic plaited bracelet, or help your kids get more ambitious with a loom band kit.
Follow these instructions from Loom Love on how to make eight different loom band bracelets.
Have a sleepover
Part of the fun of going to a music festival is sharing a tent with your friends. If you have a garden and your kids are old enough, why not let them sleep outside in their festival tent?
For younger kids (or colder nights), make a comfy indoor den with sleeping bags for your tired festival-goers.
What to wear at a festival-themed party
One thing that is absolutely essential for your kids' festival party outfit is a pair of wellies. The more colourful, patterned or glittery the better!
For the rest, encourage your kid to go as big and elaborate as they possibly can.
Tie dye, flowery patterns, leopard print, fluorescent trousers, silver anoraks, and biodegradable glitter are all great festival glam classics.
For your kids' accessories, you could try:
- funky wigs
- star-shaped sunglasses
- flower crowns
- sticky face gems
Festival-themed food and drink
Festival party food
Your kids are going to be busy running around their mini festival, so you'll want to make sure you've got easy-to-eat finger food on hand.
There's no end of different kinds of food you can find at a music festival, so you've got loads of options for what you choose to make. Home made burgers and mini pizzas are both good savoury party dishes, or for something vegan you could try these cauliflower hot wings or root vegetable crisps.
Check out more ideas on savoury party food for kids.
Festival cake and other treats
Whether you're baking the cake yourself or hiring a professional baker, you'll find a lot of cake decorating inspiration in the festival party theme.
Use icing to make an edible festival site – piped green butter icing and edible flowers are ideal for making the grass. For smaller kids, you could use their toys to represent people at the festival. Get more cake decorating ideas in this article (including how to make the grass).
For other party desserts, jelly always goes down a treat. You can mix things up a bit by layering different coloured jellies together. Churros are another good festival staple, while these Kellogg's® Rice Krispies® butterflies will get you into the festival season's summery mood at any time of year.
Mocktails for kids
Older kids will love getting to taste what they think of as 'grown up drinks'. If you want to treat your kids and their friends, use fruit juice and tonic water to make a festival party mocktail – remember to add cocktail umbrellas for a fun garnish!
Follow this recipe to make a strawberry mocktail for kids, or check our all our fun mocktail ideas.
(Bear in mind though that younger kids really don't need the sugar. The NHS recommends you stick to water and milk for kids under five-years-old. For older kids, it's best to stick to no more than one glass (150ml) of sweeter drinks, and serve it with food.)
Sending out festival ticket invitations
Now you've got your festival party planned, it's time to invite your kids' friends along.
Try to send party invitations out three weeks beforehand to give the other parents time to plan.
Make the invitations extra special by designing them to look like a festival ticket. If you or your kids are feeling creative, you could draw a festival logo, or use stickers and stencils for extra pizzazz.
Make sure you include these essential points:
- Date, time and venue of the party
- Date you need an RSVP by
- Whether you want other parents to stick around
- Whether or not guests will be sleeping over
- Costume suggestions
- Dietary requirements
What to put in festival themed party bags
You can have a lot of fun making festival-themed party bags. Anything that says 'party' or 'glam' goes!
Biodegradable glitter, body gems and kids' temporary tattoos are all relatively inexpensive things to include. You can't go wrong putting in a pot of bubbles too.
If you have time during the party, you could take a polaroid photo of the kids in their festival outfits to take home with them.
Pop in a slice of cake, and make sure everyone remembers to take home their wristbands and flower garlands too.
Want to know how else you can make your kids' party one to remember? Check out these tips from us, or get ideas from other parents on the forum:
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