Penny Party - A Quick & Simple Party for the Grandkids

Yesterday we hosted a belated birthday party for Sarah, Kat and Maddy. I reached back into my grandma memory bank and pulled out the...

Penny Party!

This is a super-easy, super-inexpensive party theme. I bought a cake mix, whipped topping, ice cream cups, and 4 bags of the chocolate coins covered in gold foil (more about those later).

You can get a lot of mileage with little kids and pennies.

First I burgled 200 pennies out of the coin jar Mark keeps on his dresser. Then I hid them (pretty much in plain sight) around the living room before the grandkids came.

I also made up a quick little "penny bag" for each of the kids. The girls got yellow polka dots, and Josh got one with a manlier print.

It didn't take long for 4 grandchildren to find 200 pennies.

We counted to make sure we had found them all.

Let the Penny Games begin!

First we played Drop the Penny in the Silver Pitcher

They had to stand with a penny on their chin and try to get it to land in the pitcher. Obviously, Maddy had less of a handicap here than Joshua had. This kept them entertained for about 7.5 minutes.

Then we played Toss the Penny on the Diamonds

In theory, they were aiming for the green diamonds in the linoleum flooring. The kids were good sports about this game, but it was even less exciting than Drop the Penny in the Pitcher. They would have been more enthused with better targets and better prizes, I think. Since I didn't have any targets or prizes at all, it should be fairly easy to bring this game up a notch the next time we try something like this.

All right then, on to Pin the Penny on the Maddy!

First, we needed a Maddy:

The kids colored in the Maddy outline, except for the face.

They they took turns putting their pennies on the Maddy, trying to give her a face. (I put little rolls of masking tape on the back of the pennies. Each grandchild got to put 4 pennies on the Maddy.)

Time to sing "Happy Birthday." I made strawberry cupcakes and kept the frosting super-simple: Whipped Topping. The kids put a few sprinkles on the top and everyone was happy. We also had the little plastic cups with ice cream in them, and I gave each of the kids a bag of foil-covered chocolate "coins" as party favors.

The kids played together until it was time to head home.

Happy belated birthday, Maddy, Kat, and Sarah!