Birthday Pinatas

Traditional birthday pinatas are fancy, highly decorative paper mache animals filled with candy and/or small toys. You can buy or make them yourself.

Hang pinatas by a rope or a pulley from a branch (or hook).

Using a pulley can be a lot of fun: you can lower or raise the pinata, so a child who swings at it with a blindfold on -- won't be able to get it. Hence, you can control, to some degree, when the kids break the pinata. It's useful, because you want every youngster to have a turn "at bat."

You can blindfold older children. Then steer them in the direction of the pinata, and allow three or more tries to break it.

You don't have to put a blindfold on younger kids -- just hitting the pinata with a bat will be enough of a challenge for them. Make sure to hang the pinata securely -- pulley, or not.

It's important that you supervise the pinata-breaking activity. Children can get excited and end up in the way of the bat-swinging child.

A problem can arise if he or she breaks the pinata partially. Then the other kids might rush to the pinata to collect any goodies that are dribbling out. But the child with the bat can be still swinging away! Please watch out for this!