Twenty reasons I love being a London Children’s Entertainer

1. Being a London children’s entertainer,  I get to work in my home town but in different places every day. No drab office for me!
2. Being a children’s entertainer I raise smiles on my way to work , because of number 3…
3. Being a children’s entertainer , I get to wear silly clothes to work.
4. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to perform for the most honest audience: children.
5. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to blow raspberries and wiggle my bottom for fun. At 47.
6. As a children’s entertainer,  I am my own boss.
7. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to play with puppets and get paid for it.
8. Being a children’s entertainer, I get high fives and spontaneous cuddles for tips.
9. Being a children’s entertainer, I can dye my hair pink if I wish and still be employable.
10. Being a children’s entertainer , I get to sing for people who won’t judge me like Simon Cowell.
11. Being a children’s entertainer, my homework is making up stories and keeping up with Kids television.
12. Being a children’s entertainer, I get offered cake , champagne and sausages as part of my work perks. ( Occupational hazard, I call it)
13. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to inspire the future leaders of the world.
14. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to gild lillies every time I paint those sweet faces.
15. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to impart calm and focus to chaotic situations.
16. Being a children’s entertainer, I often get hugs from tearful parents at the end of the party. Tears of joy, I might add.
17. Being a children’s entertainer, I get to have a reason to make elephants from milk cartons. And knit six foot pythons.
    

    SSSSsssssssssssss

    

    I was once a plastic container

18. Being a children’s entertainer , I witness true love every time I see parents smiling at their hopping children playing Sleeping Bunnies.
19. Being a children’s entertainer, I can fulfill my dream to be a fairy, vicariously through my puppet Fifi the Baby Fairy.
20. Being a children’s entertainer, I can dispel the myth of the 30 second attention span. Children can focus for a good hour if you give them real interaction.

Diane is Diane Goldie from Diane’s Puppets , a London Children’s Entertainer.

Diane Goldie : London Children's Entertainer

Don’t Hate, Celebrate!( or how to avoid the revenge party bag syndrome)

 

I came across this blog post via Twitter  : Five reasons to hate kids parties . It is a very funny, perfectly frank response to today’s party competitive syndrome where parents feel pressured into putting on the biggest and best party, costing plenty of money in the process. While I really appreciate how parents must feel about the stress of party hosting, I did find it a little disappointing that many parents opt to not host a party at all and some jokingly referred to preparing ‘revenge’ party bags full of  noise makers and sweets to stress out the parents of the party guests when they got home.

What a shame.

Okay, I’m not without humour ( I have a masters degree in being silly after all) and I do appreciate that most of these comments were posted in jest but I did feel that underneath the jokes and quips lies a backbone of bitterness and resentment. This is what I find sad. Parties should be joyful occasions, remembering after all that they are for our children. I ask yourself to think with your inner child’s brain and remember yourself as a child and how important and significant your annual birthday event was. As adults we’d rather forget our ageing and skim over our birthdays but when you are four turning five, oh my! This is an event. All children without exception want to be big. Let’s forget the grown-ups and their expectations and concentrate on our children. What is fun for them? What is important for them? Their parents attention in short. Throwing good money after bad is just a panic tactic that really doesn’t equal a good party experience as I have covered in my previous blog post here. What all children really want is an opportunity to show that they are of worth. They are natural pleasers. Nothing gives a child more pleasure than making mummy and daddy happy. So forget the plastic and sweets, here’s my suggestion for a cheap party that your child will love. Do stuff with your kids. Get on the floor if they’re little and play ring a rosies with them. Play musical statues/bumps with them, prepare to enter their world and be silly.Play the games that you used to play at your own birthday parties with them, your children will love that if you do. That is the key. If you enjoy it, if you invest good energy into it, they will follow.

As for party bags, well forget the spiteful revenge bag and just be creative. Why not make it into a game of fish, ( just have one small gift per child) or lucky dip? I’ve seen children going away from parties with a strawberry plant, pleased as punch. The party bag idea is a token gift. It doesn’t have to be huge or even a bag. Just something … come on parents, I know you can do it.

Don’t give up on fun. Our children rely on us.

 

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Balloons, the pros and cons.

Image via Wikipedia

As a London children’s entertainer of over 17 years experience, I’ve been to a fair few parties. How many I couldn’t possibly accurately calculate, but I’d hazard a guess that I’m probably past my thousandth party.  With all this experience I’ve become acutely aware of what can make or break a children’s party, especially from the entertainer’s perspective. Ideally when hiring an entertainer, the intention is to have a fun party with as little stress as possible. This doesn’t come without some planning and the best parties come from good team work between the client and the entertainer. Communication is vital, make sure you spend some time chatting to your entertainer to make sure they know what they are doing. Personally I feel an entertainer who is willing to compromise and bend to all requests may suggest an entertainer with little or no experience. An experienced entertainer is a source of many hints and tips for making your party successful, so don’t be afraid of picking their brains. A wise client is one who listens to suggestions from the entertainer and works in conjunction with them.  Good teamwork is essential for a smooth and calm party. I don’t know about you, but I like to avoid chaos at all costs.

Let’s start with BALLOONS.

Balloons. What party is complete without them? They provide instant festive decoration and are a party must. Right?

Right. But there are also times when balloons can be the cause of party chaos.

As an entertainer who wants to make sure my client’s party experience is a calm and controlled affair, I walk a tightrope of sergeant major/party-pooper. It’s a fine balance of keeping control but also not destroying the fun atmosphere. After all , fun is what a party is about. But out of control fun can soon descend into very unpleasant chaos. This is easily avoided though by taking some precautionary measures.

When booking a party with Diane’s Puppets, I suggest to my clients that if they are having balloons, to make sure they are kept off of the floor.

Party-pooper alert? Hmm, maybe, but balloons are great fun to play with on the floor as long as there is no other planned activity going on. If you are having a free play /soft play session for your party, by all means cover the floor with balloons. They are a  simple and cheap way of keeping small children busy. Combine balloons with a few bubbles and that is a party in itself. But and this is a big BUT if you have booked entertainment for the party, keep the focus on the booked entertainment. Children find it hard to focus on one thing if there are lots of other things going on at the same time and that inability to focus often leads to all-consuming chaos.

Keep balloons tied up and out of reach if you don’t want loose balloons to become bouncy weapons and missiles, perfect objects to hurl into puppet booths or bash puppets/entertainers/each other with.

Don’t underestimate the noise balloons can create when in a child’s grasp, the squeaking and bursting and general distraction they can cause can’t be over-emphasized.

Helium balloon ‘forests’ can be a beautiful decorative feature, but make sure that the dangling string is just out of children’s reach otherwise expect a few children to take on the role of chief balloon collector and claim them all. If there is to be a puppet show, make sure helium balloons are away from the front of the stage as the constant bobbing of the balloons can completely obscure the view for the majority of the audience and also risk popping on the hot lights. On that note, do bear  in mind that some children are balloon phobic especially if they happen to be autistic and sensitive to noise. Balloons can then be a very terrifying thing, unpredictable and very loud when popped. We want to minimize tears and disruption and maximize fun by thinking in advance.

So to summarize:

• Keep ‘air’ balloons off of the floor if you are having entertainment and use them for decoration and going away gifts at the end of the party.
• Make sure the string of helium balloons is just above the reach of the tallest child at the party to minimize squabbles and disruption if you want to make a forest of helium balloons .
• Tie helium balloons firmly to the child’s wrist on departure- they have a nasty habit of flying to the moon if you don’t. ( The balloons that is, not the children!)
• Consider tying helium balloon to each of the chairs at the tea table. This is a great way of adding instant party pizzazz but keeps the balloons in a secure place.
• Be mindful of any left over latex from burst balloons, small children can easily choke. In my time as an entertainer, adults have been known to use the stretchy stuff to make makeshift caterpaults to fire at the entertainer… Hmm. Not great. Silly grown-up’s hey?

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The changing face of Pass the Parcel

Everyone sits in a circle, the music starts, it’s time for Pass the Parcel.

A huge paper parcel is ‘passed’ around the children in the circle; well, let’s be honest, it’s more like the parcel has to be wrestled from the determined grip of one child and forcibly passed on to the next and so on.

When the music stops, the paper layer is ripped off to reveal a sweet or small toy and the struggle to keep the parcel in one’s grasp continues. While it seems fun at the beginning, anyone who has experienced as many games of Pass the Parcel as I have over the years knows that at a certain point the game loses any tension and the children often wander off from the circle looking for something else to do. The promise of the ‘big’ prize at the end isn’t really enough to keep most young children focused on the game.

The basic principle of the game in its present form seems to be about winning  prizes. Everyone gets a prize, fair enough, no one wants to lose but if everyone automatically wins every time something is lost : tension. And it is this lack of tension that is the reason many children cannot sit still once they’ve ‘won’ their sweet. For them the game really is over. Who can blame them for wanting to get up and walk off?

This old party classic, Pass the Parcel is often considered  an absolute must for children’s birthday parties. Without wanting to sound like a party pooper, I’m not so keen on the game in its present incarnation.

When I was a young girl, in the dim distant sixties, Pass the Parcel was a very different game indeed.

A parcel was prepared with a random number of layers. It didn’t matter if the number of layers didn’t match the number of participants as this game was principally a game of chance. The only prize was the one in the middle and it was this tension of never knowing when that central special prize was going to be discovered that kept boys and girls sitting on their bottoms, fixated on the moving parcel, wishing it was going to land on them next and make them the lucky winner.

This may seem a little unfair in our current world of everyone gets a prize, but it really worked.

To ring the changes and make the game even more interesting, forfeits were written and hidden between the layers, making the game really exciting and interactive. Children were asked to hop on one leg three times and got a prize if they completed it, or say the alphabet, or sing a nursery rhyme or pull a funny face or tell a joke. The possibilities were endless and it all made for a really fun and exciting game.

Have we thrown away the essence of Pass the Parcel in our quest to be fair to every child ? Consider how much more valued a prize of a sweetie is if it is ‘won’ by doing something other than just tearing off a piece of paper. Of course, mummies and daddies sometimes have to help complete the forfeit for their child but there is nothing more enjoyable for a small child than the warm and loving attention of a parent engaged in child’s play.

And this parental attention is the best prize of all for a child, more valuable than any piece of tat that can be found in a parcel. The real prize is in the playing of the game and guess what?

Even though not everyone may win a sweet or a toy , everyone becomes a  winner after all.

Zen and the art of party hosting

I often get asked what makes a good party. My answer often surprises: less is more; especially when it comes to parties for small children.

The tendency of most people ,when stressed about a party, is to throw everything at it and hope for the best. The thinking is that if I spend enough on it, it must work.

I’ve found the opposite to be true. Most often the best parties are the simplest where the focus is clear.

The hardest parties that I’ve ever had to attend in my capacity as an entertainer were those where the client had hired the world and his mate for the party, with all the best intentions, of course.

A typical party would consist of  a large ( and very noisy) bouncy castle, a ball pool, numerous helium balloons making a balloon forest, a wealth of sit and ride toys, slides, swings, tunnels and an abundance of soft play equipment and a disco.  All very well and good if this were the only form of entertainment, but add to this physical mix three or four children’s entertainers : a balloon modeller, a magician, a face painter or two and then me, a puppet lady. We were all expected to work together in a small space of time without any form of prior planning. All of this for a two year old’s birthday, the same two year old that was looking bewildered, clinging to mummy ( or nanny) on the verge of tears.

The sum total of all this spending resulted in chaos. Noise chaos, visual chaos and lack of focus for the birthday child. The individual entertainers found it hard to find a time or the audience to do their thing ( with all the competition around for time and attention). Everyone was compromised. All in the name of doing the right thing.

For a successful party, let your mantra be LESS IS MORE.

Decide on your focus , you know your child best and  what makes them happy. Sometimes the same thing again as the last thing they enjoyed works brilliantly. I call this the Teletubby ‘again again’ principle. Adults find this hard to understand; we get bored. Children revisit their memory of previous fun times and it fills them with a sense of confidence .

If your child is physical and out-going, hire a bouncy castle and play equipment and just let them play. Or a football/ dancing party.

If they are shy but physical, hire an entertainer who does physically interactive parties and let the focus on the  entertainer bring out the confidence of your child . A good entertainer will not focus on a shy child, but allow them to be themselves and take the lead from the child. Sensitivity is key. My Bobby Bunny puppet show is perfect for shy active children of all ages as it is a gentle but cheeky show with integrated hopping participation.

A puppet show  is perfect for outgoing, creative children who like to be in the limelight and who enjoy the flight of imagination and creativity a puppet show brings.

Face painting is wonderful for shy children as it often gives them a mask to hide behind, allowing them to be the ‘fierce tiger’ on the outside that they imagine they could be on the inside. You’d be surprised how many actors are painfully shy in the real world. It’s the same principle.

Let this recession be a force for simplifying. Choose one thing and give your child the opportunity to be able to focus fully and have a stress free party.

Recession? What recession? Let’s party!

In these tough economic times, it’s hard to feel in the mood to celebrate anything, least of all our children’s birthday parties. Morale is low, cash is lower. The prospect of a horde of marauding kids charging around our homes, breaking stuff, crying for mummy or daddy, fighting over the pass the parcel , throwing food ( insert your nightmare party visions here) fills most people with dread. Parties have fast become most parents idea of hell. Well consider me your party angel, as I’m here to change party hell into party heaven. As a seasoned party entertainer of over 17 years experience, I hope to be able to support you in my blog with hints and tips of how to host a successful children’s party on a tight budget.

If you are as old as me , you may have memories of your own birthday parties with pass the parcel, jelly and ice cream and pin the tail on the donkey and Squeak piggy Squeak! Back then children’s birthday parties were all so simple . Todays parents and children have much bigger expectations of birthday parties and many parents feel the pressure to keep up with the Jones’s and host the party to end all parties. Before the nasty old recession hit, this was fairly straight forward : hire an entertainer and venue, buy booze for the adults and party bags and food, drink and cake for the kids and sit back and let someone else take the strain. Now it is not so easy as budget restraints mean we don’t have the privilege of this choice. Or do we? You’d be surprised at how much value for money and peace of mind you can get with a children’s party entertainer and it need not be as expensive as you might think.In my capacity as a children’s  party entertainer and puppeteer  I offer all kinds of packages to suit different budgets and also include face painting along side puppet shows , singing and storytelling so there is  no need to hire a separate face painter, saving you loads of money. Puppets have a wonderful ability to engage the imaginations of the youngest of children right up to adults and combining them with very silly good old fashioned British humour means that belly laughs are guaranteed.

In these challenging times it is easy to fear the prospect of our children’s party rather than look forward to it . I’d like to leave you with a thought. Maybe the recession has an unexpected gift to bestow on us as parents. It has forced us to strip away the surface and get back to what really matters; our relationship with our children. Before the recession, parents at parties would stand at the back with other parents, chatting, networking and  sipping champagne while the entertainer got on with his or her job.  Now parents are to be found sitting alongside their children sharing in the joy of the moment, relishing in the giggles and their children’s happiness. I call that progress,wouldn’t you?