Ideas for an inexpensive 5th birthday party!  

I did a jungle theme, it is really easy to do. You can make the invitations out of boxes of animal crackers and construction paper. Print out the information on plain white paper and paste to construction paper and then paste to the box of animal crackers. Hand deliver to the guest.

for favors go on a safari and have the kids hunt for animals, you can find bags of plastic animals at dollar stores, this serves two purposes a game and a favor


you can make the cake yourself and use plastic animals to decorate it as well.

for food you can have animal crackers and gold fish.

Check out familyfun.com - it is the best online (and subscription) magazine for kids and family. Online has tons of ideas for birthdays and literally any other celelbration you can think of. Choose a theme for your little girl and have at it! They have everything from making the invitations to the food to games and decorations. It is a very good magazine.. online or by mail! I subscribe and I am always going through the magazine for ideas for crafts and things for them to do and when I need an idea.. I check the online site for answers.

When my children were small I made almost everything alt home. I bought colored cardboard and made hats. I made the piñata by mtself and I had more fun that the kids at destroying it
I bought jello of different colours and made a rainbow jello. You can put some icecream on the side.
I bought inexpensive noisy flutes and things like that (you can also buy something to put over your poor ears. They love to make noise.
And remember the tradicionsal games. Puting a tail to a donkey, musical chairs and such. Prizes (small ones) help.

If you live close to a park, why not just invite everyone to the park. The kids can play on the park and then you can serve cake and ice cream and open gifts there. If you want, you can do a few games with the kids too.

I set up the backyard for field day events. I also had each kid bring a white t-shirt and I set up buckets of dye in the yard for the kids to tye-dye their own shirts. The kids love the shirts and loved the races. For each of the winners of a race they got to pick out a lollipop.

For an indoor party I let the kids be little chefs. I made regular cupcakes and let the kids add different ingrediants to their cupcake. Then while they played I baked the cupcakes when they were done I let them decorate them and eat them. They had a blast.

Hi Cheeky,
Well I have three kids and have thrown lots of birthday parties! I even custom create invitations on the side www.creativeinspirations4u.webs.com for super affordable - believe me I understand wanting to save a penny. Because my kids birthdays vary throughout the year, I've thrown indoor and outdoor. In the summeritme, I've had water play birthday parties - set up sprinklers outside, kiddy pools, water ballons, games, toys -things they can do outdoors - bubbles (Walmart sells large bubble things for just $1.00 a piece). You can get a jumper (although this is more expensive), have a friend do facepainting (kids love this)!! A playdough station, or craft station, pinata, games like red light/green light, freeze tag, hot potato (with prizes for the kids to win) ... always things like musical chairs. Hope these ideas help and have fun!!!