My son turns 9 this weekend. He's got a party at our house with six friends (four boys and two girls). It may rain.
Does anyone have any good ideas for last minute indoor activities if it does rain? Thanks in advance.

Kids love face painting, games where something is hidden and they have to find it, etc.

I have also rolled up pieces of paper with directions or puzzles and put them in balloons before you blow them up. When the kids pop them they can read the clues and it lead to a prize.

The best birthday party I ever threw was based on the book Captain UnderPants. There is a book about lunchroom ladies so I made food with disgusting names that was really all their favorite foods. We used the name generator in the book http://www.ultsoftware.com/NameGen.html and had to call eachother the name on the name tags or we had to eat something gross like worms (gummy) or maggots (rice). We made goop with cornstarch and water to carry in contests from one bucket to another. We did not have birthday cake, we had birthday sushi. I made it with gummy worms rolled up in sheets of rice krispy treats wrapped in green fruit roll ups and then sliced into the typical rolls. We let the kids play video games some because it was an overnight party with 14 boys. We also showed an older kids' movie we could pretty much bet no one had seen, the first Super Mario movie.

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Wow. Great ideas. Very cool. Thank you!

When I was about 9 or 10 we had non-alcoholic cocktails with fun names and umbrellas and fruit etc in the glasses which my friends all thought was 'ultra-sophisticated'.

We also used to play silly games like 'kipper flapping' You cut out some pieces of paper in the shape of fish, and have to flap them along the floor with a rolled up newspaper in races. Sounds daft but it had us all collapsing in laughter.

You can also play simple games like passing a polo mint from one person to another view straw you're holding between your teeth. Again, something that makes you collapse in giggles, but I'm not sure how it would go down at a mixed party. Depends how shy of the opposite sex 9 year olds are, I suppose.

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You can do a "Wizard of Id, Spook's place rocks" party, where you just chain them to a wall for three hours. It's good practice for Lilith's later in life.

A cinema party's really easy, and the mess is somewhere else.

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How'd the party go Jax?

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The party went GREAT! (Thank you for asking). And Lilith, I borrowed your idea about the treasure hunt/scavenger hunt with the notes in balloons. It went over well. Boys popping balloons and reading the notes after the found them from shooting out from the explosion. Good times.

Thanks for the tips everyone! I'm ready for next time and the next kid!

Jax.