At Non-Stop Kids, we perform hundreds of parties per month and we have contracts with famous themed parks such as Drayton Manor, Legoland and Alton Towers! All of our entertainers are highly experienced, enthusiastic and give it 110% at all of their parties every single day! However, one question we frequently get asked by parents is how do our entertainers keep children entertained for two hours?
Managing a Children's Party: Tips and Strategies
That's a brilliant question! As a parent, you know trying to keep the attention of a child on a daily basis can be a daunting task. When it comes to parties, you think, "How on Earth do I keep everyone's focus for two hours?!" At Non Stop Kids, our entertainers specialise two hour party packages. On occasion, we go up to three! It's incredible! We have many parents ask us if one entertainer is enough to handle 30-40 kids for two hours. Absolutely! All of our entertainers have many years of experience; some of them are former red coats from Butlins. Regardless, everyone we work with has more than enough experience to entertain and manage a party for two hours.
How Do We Do It?
Let's take our hassle free package. This is our most popular party package, and as the name suggests it's a complete hassle free experience for you as the parent. Our entertainer arrives and takes care of everything for the full two hours. Firstly, they arrive 30 minutes in advance to set up all of their party equipment that has been tested for safety and is state of the art technology. By setting up well in advance, there's already an amazing party atmosphere for when the kid's walk into the room.
As the party begins, the entertainer kicks off with an award winning comedy magic show for 45 minutes! A lot of parents have described this as a mini pantomime. Our entertainer engages with all of the kids in their magic show all the way through and gets the birthday child to help with a special trick. Halfway we, while kids eat, we continue running the disco and follow on the rest of the party with high energy party games that are all played to the music and supply prizes at the end of the party. No child is going to decline the chance to win prizes & sweets.
All The Kids Are Engaged!
See what our entertainer did? Throughout these two hours, the entertainer didn't stop. As they start the magic show, the kids are immediately engaged, and because everyone is involved and interacted with the whole time, the kid's only have that show as their main focus and won't get distracted by anything else. While the kids were eating, the disco continued so any kids who finished eating early don't just sit around and can immediately jump back into the action. Once all the kids were back, the entertainer introduced their high energy party games that everyone was a part of! Best of all, no one gets eliminated! If you've booked one of our parties before or read a previous Blog, you know we absolutely despise elimination games! It's unfair to knock kids out of the games and if the birthday child gets eliminated from their own party, that's just begging for chaos to happen. But because no one gets eliminated with our games and our entertainer is engaged with everyone the whole way through, the kid's won't get bored and all their attention will be occupied with the entertainer.
We also have our secret weapon: Charlie the Dog! Charlie is our puppet that all of our entertainers bring along as their little assistant. He's super cute but also very naughty! He messes with the entertainers tricks and it gets all of the children laughing! They really relate to someone doing something they shouldn't be doing. The kids absolutely love Charlie. We've even had parents offer to purchase Charlie from our entertainers; that's how great he really is.
As a bonus, we sometimes do balloon models for the kids but the problem with a lot of entertainment companies out there is they expect all the kids to sit in a circle and watch them make balloon models. They just get bored so easily and lose interest in seconds. Instead, our entertainers make the balloon models while the kids are eating so they don't have to just sit around and wait. By the time they've eaten their food, all the balloon models will be ready and everyone gets one to take home with them. The birthday child even gets a special balloon to keep afterwards.
We Run The Whole Show!
The key that you need to understand is engagement and interaction. Kid's attention span is very short and they can be distracted easily. Because of this, whenever we provide a service to a party, we discourage the use of bouncy castles and similar party equipment. It grabs the attention of the kids so much that if you're hiring entertainment as well, there's just no chance the entertainer can do their job when the children are distracted by something else.
There you have it! This is just one of many examples of how our entertainers keep so many children entertained for two hours. Everyone one of our entertainers are highly experienced and have many years of practise when it comes to entertaining children! It's their passion and regardless of how big a challenge, they overcome any obstacle!
