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How to Have an Epic Virtual Birthday Party For Kids

Inside you will find how to have a virtual birthday party for a school-aged kid. Having an online party is a great idea during quarantine, if you’re stuck at home or because your family and friends live far away. Don’t miss the video of all of our fun at the bottom of this post!

My middle son has been talking about his birthday party for months.

Of course, when it was getting time to plan one, everyone was advised to socially distance ourselves from others. Womp womp.

A few weeks ago, the topic of what to do for birthday parties came up in my bible study group chat.

There are so many great ideas for virtual birthday parties!

My friend said they sent out an invitation to their friends and family to have a virtual birthday party! They included an Amazon wish list but encouraged “guests” to send cards because what kid doesn’t like getting physical mail? She also mentioned they were going to do a Lego Challenge during the party.

This got my wheels turning for my son’s party. Together, the birthday boy and I came up with a game plan.

virtual birthday party planning

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How to Have an Epic Virtual Birthday Party

Let’s break down how to have a birthday party for the books!

The great thing about having an eight-year-old’s birthday party online is that there doesn’t need to be a ton of planning and barely any physical preparation.

It’s also easier for guests because they don’t have to go anywhere and if they really wanted to, they could attend without pants on!

Although, I do recommend pants for this kind of virtual party.

Planning an Online Party

Pick A Theme

We always start party planning with a theme. For a virtual party, this is also helpful.

My son chose Minecraft. He only gets limited time 1-2 times a week to play, but when he does, it is all he can talk about.

Pick an Activity

The next step is to pick an activity you can do virtually.

Virtual chatrooms are GREAT, however, when you have many people all on at once with no one leading a discussion, it can get chaotic. For this reason, we wanted to give everyone something to do.

A few fun virtual party ideas:

  1. Build Legos
  2. Draw pictures
  3. Do an art lesson
  4. Play a singing or “play that tune” kind of game
  5. Have a dance-Off or do other dance games
  6. Do a Sing-Along
  7. Have a cook or Bake-Off
  8. Play games – Simon Says or the 20 Questions Game can both work well virtually (Remember, there’s a chat option in Zoom!)
  9. Read stories popcorn style
  10. Play charades
  11. Practice yoga
  12. Play guessing Games – Hold an item up or show a small part of a drawing and everyone guesses what it is.
  13. Do a scavenger hunt
virtual scavenger hunt

Doing a virtual scavenger hunt fits perfectly with Minecraft as the game has a plethora of tools and options to pick from. We knew instantly that we would come up with a list of items for the guests to go find.

Pick a “Place”, Date and Time

Every birthday party needs these elements: date, time and location.

Online Place: The location piece of this online birthday party is the EASIEST part. Everyone gets to stay at home!

You do need to pick a video conferencing software and set up a call for everyone to call into at once. The most popular that I know of right now is Zoom. Although, there are many other alternatives that could work so pick what is best for you!

Zoom was super easy to use. I set up the meeting, got a meeting ID and included that in the description in the Evite.

Date: We decided to have the party on my son’s actual birthday since it fell on a Friday this year. We sent out the online invitation about 10 days before the party. That gave people plenty of time to mail a card or send a gift and make plans to be on the call.

Time: When picking a time, keep timezones in mind. We are in Pacific Time right now but invited a lot of people from the east coast.

With this in mind, we chose to start at 4:30 PM PST/7:30 PM ET. After work but before bed!

evite invitation

Virtually Send Out the Invitation

Once we had a plan, we put a guest list together, compiled everyone’s emails and sent out the Evite. There are many virtual birthday party invitation sites available such as:

Or if you’re into physical invitations and have plenty of time to get them out, there are great sites like Purple Trail who has a service that sends out the invites for you!

Party Prep

Once the idea was set and the invitations were sent, the last thing we needed to do was prepare for the scavenger hunt.

This was my favorite part because it was very minimal.

minecraft scavenger hunt virtual birthday party

Party Favors

We encouraged friends to stop by with the option to drop off cards or gifts on our porch throughout the day.

At an in-person birthday party, kids typically get a goodie bag so we wanted to incorporate that element into our son’s virtual birthday party as well.

For all local friends (we have no family in the state we live in), we had small bags with a few fun Minecraft-themed items such as these super cool sunglasses (hello! We live in Arizona!), Minecraft pencils and Minecraft stickers.

Thankfully, we had these colorful paper bags leftover from last year’s Ninjago themed party.

goodie bags

Activity Prep

Before the party, prepare any materials you are going to need for the activity you have planned.

For the scavenger hunt, our son looked up a master list of all Minecraft items then wrote down what he thought would work well for the party.

Sending Out A Reminder

Thankfully, Evite sends out an automatic reminder a few days before the virtual party. In addition to that, I sent out a personalized email to everyone who was going to be on the Zoom call with specific instructions.

Seeing that we had some guests who may not have used Zoom before, I gave brief instructions on how to join the meeting, advised them to make sure the video and audio were on, AND I gave instructions on how to turn on mute!

Instructions for the activity were also given.

For our Minecraft themed virtual birthday party, the rules for the scavenger hunt were quite simple. The birthday boy would say a Minecraft item and everyone on the call would have to go find a real-life object that resembled that same item. We thought we were going to use a timer but we realized that wasn’t necessary after we started. Creativity was highly encouraged and that is what we got!

Lastly, I reminded local guests to stop by our house for their special treat. In the reminder, I mentioned that our security cameras would be recording them so if they wanted to do a little dance, we would show Nolan at the end of the night. Two of the families that stopped by played music from their phones. It was such a fun sight to see our friends having a dance party on our front porch!

goodie bags for social distancing birthday party

Party Time!

When the day arrives, it’s time to (virtually) party!

We set out the goodie bags on the porch with a sign my son made that read, “Thanks for coming!”

You could also put balloons out front or a huge sign encouraging passerby’s to honk their horns. Friends could do a driveby parade bringing their own balloons and signs, too! We decided to keep it as simple as possible.

Next, we prepared the list of scavenger hunt items. Then we tested the connection and set up.

We were planning on using an iPhone connected to our living room TV but as people started to join, we realized we could only see 4 guests at a time in the grid view on the Zoom phone app. Therefore, we quickly joined the meeting from my Chromebook, plugged THAT into the TV and kept the live video on the iPhone. This way, people didn’t have to call back in and the streaming quality was probably much better this way!

My husband and I had great teamwork and got it done quickly!

Once everyone was on, most people muted their audio and the scavenger hunt began! We didn’t really chat or give any time to talk. I guess we could have but we wanted to start on the activity right away to lessen the chaos.

The birthday boy read off an item (followed by his brothers and me! Ha!), then the guests scrambled to get an item to bring back to their phone or laptop as fast as they could.

We started the game with keeping score, but as the scavenger hunt went on, winners and losers didn’t really matter.

Instead, the focus was on how creative people could be with the items they choose and all the laughter and screaming. The excitement level was high in our house as our boys also went and found the items so they could play along as well.

A Party To Remember!

In all, I think we were all to the point where we needed human interaction.

It’s hard being stuck at home!

Instead of being bummed that we couldn’t have a birthday party for our little guy turning eight years old, we pulled together as a community and provided such an epic memory!

If you know of any kids who have a birthday right now or have family far away, please share so they can have just as much fun as us! Click on the sharing buttons below. Thank you!

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Comments

  1. This is a fantastic idea! Both of our kids’ birthdays were in February so thankfully, we were able to have a regular birthday party for them. This is a great alternative, though, for those who can’t! Thanks for sharing 🙂

    Reply

  2. This is so creative! I am not a tech person, but I think I could figure it out. I love the idea of putting goodie bags on the porch. My kids would get such a kick out of that. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  3. Wonderful post!
    My daughter, who is turning 5, was looking forward to her first “real” party this year.
    Unfortunately, we don’t have any contact info for any of her friends in her preschool class.

    Reply

  4. These are some great tips for virtual bday. My baby is turning 3 year old next month . Definitely gonna try a few tips in here

    Reply

  6. I love your ideas for virtual activities with friends! Those will certainly come in handy because I’ve been planning to Facetime with my kids’ friends and I have no idea what we should do! haha. Thanks for this list!

    Reply

  14. This is brilliant. Awesome I’d add.
    My son’s birthday is in a five days. I don’t know if I can do this for a 2 year old. I haven’t an idea of how to go about it yet.
    And I want him to have something for that day.

    Reply

  15. OMG this has got to be the most creative party I’ve ever seen! We do parties all the time, and no amount of coordinating food tents could match this kind of thoughtfulness for your little birthday boy! My little one turned 9 literally on the first day of the “safer at home” order in our city. It was devastating (more for me than for her) to have to cancel her friend laser tag party, and her family friend party at home. I wish I thought of something like this. Will definitely come back to this for my toddler’s bday coming up in the summer… Tho I’m hoping we won’t be still in the same situation at that point! Here’s hoping. Happy birthday to your beautiful 8 year old little man! And way to go Mama! You certainly made this bday a memorable one for him 🙂

    Reply

    • YOU ARE SO SWEET!!! Thank you! You should still throw her a virtual party!! It can just be for fun or to celebrate her birthday since it wasn’t long ago. I was never really into party planning so this was perfect for me. I got to stay in my workout clothes at home. LOL!

      Reply

  16. What a great post. Virtual birthday parties CAN be a lot of fun! You put so much thought into making this happen in what must have been very short notice. I have a few friends who aren’t sure how to throw their kids birthday parties this year but this is great, I will be sharing this with them for sure!

    Reply

  17. What a fun idea! My daughter actually spent her 13th birthday in mandatory quarantine in her bedroom, because she was exposed to two kids at school who had coronavirus. It was a tough day! She is waiting until isolation orders are lifted to do something else fun with friends, although we know things won’t be the same, since there will still be some social distancing. These are great tips for kids who have birthdays in quarantine.

    Reply

  19. Love this idea! I have one with a birthday coming up and she’s really bummed about not being able to have a party! I think we’ll try some of these ideas!

    Reply

  23. I’d also love the scavenger list. We were going to do a Minecraft escape room, but my son didn’t like it. This sounds even better! Thanks for the idea.

    Reply

  24. Amazing ideas! I have been planning a virtual Minecraft party for my sons upcoming bday. Love the scavenger hunt idea, would you please email me your list? Can’t wait to incorporate these ideas. Thank you!

    Reply

  25. I am planning a minecraft virtual party for a 6 year old. I would love to have your Minecraft scavenger list. I would appreciate it so much. Thanks.

    Reply

  26. This is so beautiful and inspiring!! I’ve been panicking trying to plan an online Minecraft party that has all the kids playing on the same server, plus zoom and it’s not as easy tech wise as I’d hoped. This gives it a whole other side that is wonderful and includes those friends/family that don’t play!! It’s perfect and I’m so glad I stumbled across this post today <3

    Can I please get a copy of the list as well? Thank you!!!

    Reply

  27. Thanks so much for publishing the steps to your great party – so much fun! I’m planning a virtual party for my 10 yo son as well and also wanted to incorporate a scavenger hunt. Can you send me your list? Thanks so much!

    Reply

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