Here are some ideas from parties that I did with your age group that you can do.
Team activities - Volleyball, Water Balloon Toss, and believe it or not old fashion wheel barrow or potato sack races can be hiliarious!
We did beachcomber relay races. We split into two teams. Each team had a big plastic shopping bag about 10 ft in front of them and about another 10 ft away a beach sand chair was facing them. Each team
Member had to go to the bag, and put on everything in the bag which included - large flowered swim trunks,
Adult size tank, a Lei, a beachcombers hat, sunglasses, flip flops ( we laughed so hard at the guys in flip flops, of course we were all in shorts/bathing suits, so their socks/shoes were off), a and coconut cup with a straw they had to hold. After dressing up, they had to run to the beach sand chair and pose for a polariod shot, then race back to the bag, and make sure they took everything off and put it back in the bag for the next team member. The first team to have all it`s member`s become official Beach Combers and all the items back in the bag WINS!
Cheeze head Game - This was hillarous! Split into teams ( 1 to 3). Each team selects one player to be the cheese head. Set up 3 chairs facing away from team line up line. Have each cheese head candidate sit in the chair. Drape a small towel around their shoulders.
Put a shower cap on each of their heads. Using shaving cream or whip topping - spray their heads with it. Get it all over the shower cap. Now each team has a bowl of cheese puffs, I used the old x` and o`s ones, put you want the puffy kind. Each team member takes a turn at tossing a cheese puff at their cheese head. Rotating to the back of the line, after each try.
At the end of 20 seconds or you can determine the time, the team with the most cheese puffs stuck to their cheese head wins! It was messy for the cheese heads, but is was fun. Some wanted to do it again, but I didn`t plan for it. You would need extra shower caps and supplies. The chairs were set about 6-8 feet from the start line. Makes for great photos!
Dancing - To get the dancing started I cut curling ribbon into 8 ft lengths. An adult or you can hold all the strings with one end in right and the other in your left, showing about 4 inches of the string. If you have even number of girls and boys then line them up in lines opposite eachother. Make sure you have cut enough strings for the amount of pairs at your party. If the numbers are uneven, then line up the same number on each side and the others can participate in the next round. The kids at our dance party wanted to do this over and over. How this works, is you walk down the line on the girls side and let them pick a ribbon from your hand,they have to hold it tight and not let go. Then go over to the other side and go down the line and let the boys pick their ribbon. Make sure the lines are less than the length of your string apart, so some string dangles and it`s hard to tell who has the other end. Once everyone has an end of the ribbon. Let them find their dance partners. Play a great song and these partners have to dance together. It makes it easy for kids not to worry about someone picking them to dance, here you get no choice but to dance with your partner.
Line dancing is fun too, you can get great photo shots and movies from the goofy things kids do. I also set it up where I was the DJ and though we had a double deck, I was on top, the kids danced below. If I saw someone dancing great, I would through them two blowup dice and the crowd would break so they could roll them. If they rolled 7 or 11 they won a prize. Of course the prizes have to be cool enough to get them to dance.
Of course for this age group plenty of finger foods and soda or punches are in order.
I hope this helps you and other pre-teens out there looking for summer party ideas. I have more party tips on my website.
Have a great party and summer!
Mic
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