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Skating Party

How to Plan a Successful Roller Skating Party

Especially fashionable during the 40's and 50's, roller skating has remained popular not only as a reminder of times past, but as a fun and exciting form of exercise and entertainment! Kids, teenagers and even adults will love the novelty of a roller skating party as they zip and twist around the rink!

Get your guests excited for the party with die-cut roller skate invitations from invitation designer Picture Perfect that even feature a real shoelace embellishment – perfect for a girl or boy birthday party! For the girls, invitation designer Periwinkle Press features a fun roller skate invite with white skates and hot pink wheels and shoelaces. Pretty pink and green stripe socks add a festive flair. For the boys, another especially fun die-cut invite features a boy with roller blades and of course a helmet and other necessary safety gear!

Skating Invitations

Roller skating rinks offer a variety of party packages that usually include rental skates, a party room, and use of the rink for a certain amount of hours. Some may even provide catering and drinks. Others offer special theme nights at the rink featuring costumes, special games, and theme music.

Free Skate

For most of the time, the kids will like to free skate. Some rinks might even provide someone to conduct games with the skaters during a particular portion of the skating time. If not, though, you can still come up with some exciting games that put their skating skills to the test! One fun game is "Four Corners" that is a variant of "Musical Chairs". Label each corner of the rink as Corner 1, 2, 3 and 4 and then give the kids 10 seconds to reach a corner. Roll a dice or pick a number out of a hat, and whichever corner number is selected, the skaters in that corner must leave the rink! That corner is also off-limits for the rest of the game. Now they must skate between three corners and hope that their corner number is not picked! Those in the last corner "survive" and win the game. You can also expand this game by using the sides of the rink for more "corners" and labeling them as numbers 5 and 6.

Games and Races

After they have practiced their skills during free skate, the kids will love to test those skills out during a race! You can have races for different age groups or speed levels. Make sure that kids are wearing the proper safety gear such as helmets and knee and elbow pads if they will be going fast! Another idea would be to choreograph a small dance routine and then hold a skate dancing contest where kids must perform the skating routine to a song, similar to ice skating. Of course, the "Hokey Pokey" is another classic skating rink game/song that the kids will love.

Food and Beverages

For food, kids will love finger foods such as vegetable and fruit slices, popcorn, and chips that they can snack on in between skating. For a more substantial meal, pizza, corndogs, or sub sandwiches are usually staples at skating rinks. Juice boxes, soda and water are great choices for drinks! For dessert, serve ice cream sandwiches or cupcakes. Cake decorator, Wilton, provides a skate cake pan that can be decorated with any color of icing.

Favors

For party favors, you can send kids home with stickers to decorate their helmets or fun colored shoelaces for when they change back into their street shoes. Some rinks even provide partygoers with a coupon for a free night of skating for another time. The kids will definitely want to take advantage of that after their fun time skating!

See the Skate Invitations mentioned in this article at Dainty Invites.

About the Author

Julie is a veteran event planner, focusing on baby showers, weddings, and children's events. Her business is located on the west coast with parties planned all over the U.S.

Which would you do, go to a skating party or get your hair cut?

I have to choose between going to a skating party or geting my hair cut on November 14th 2007

Party--you can get your hair cut any day.

Ice Skating Party.wmv

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 12:34 am and is filed under bedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.