Ball Pit Birthday Parties

The ball pit is loved by many

We recently brought back one of our favorite things to do for the kids birthday parties, ball pit birthday parties.

Let me tell you about this little Gem.

Way, way back when -- my 13yo Henry was turning two, his favorite thing in the world was balls. Footballs, basketballs, saranwrap balls, he was an only child and he had all the balls. This was back when I would decorate and put theme work into the kids parties, (in all fairness, I still do for birthday's one and two, but my Mom, who is much better at it than me, has taken the burden of decorating off of me, so you know, I can raise kids), we themed Henry's party Balls.

Well, this only-child momma did something then that has worked for all six of our kids. I got on marketplace and bought ball pit balls. I spent something ridiculous, $35 or so for thousands of balls, six big packs of them if I remember right.

At the time we had the hard plastic playpen gates that we thought we would put around our Christmas tree, (6 kids later and never have actually used them for that), so I set those up with a Red and Blue Playmate slide as the entrance. It was a hit.

Later on we grew this idea to be a cheap inflatable pool. Eleven years later, we just did this again and we need a third pool for next time.

So $35, some things we already had, and over the course of 11 years another $40 or so in inflatable pools and we've entertained countless kids for countless hours including our own when friends are over or our kids just want to play.

We could probably use another pack of balls at this point. Some of them have flatened out and been thrown out over the years.

We did stop this practice during Covid, because, well, Covid, and our older kids have grown out of wanting to have their friends over to play in the pit, (but they still play in it when it is out), but we were happy to bring it back in May for our 5 year old's birthday. Once again, the kids had an absolute blast. It took me 10 minutes to setup, it took the kids 30 seconds to destroy, but one of the best parts is cleanup is a game!

The downside is it's a pain in the butt to store. It takes up two large moving boxes which are typically stored in one of the kids closets. Also, the balls go everywhere and sometimes the kids aren't feeling the put it up game. Somehow my husband manages to get them to sort the balls by color, but I haven't figured out that black magic.