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.

You can hang birthday pinatas by a rope or a pulley from a branch (or hook) above the children's heads.

When it is on a pulley, the adult can raise or lower a pinata out of reach of a blindfolded kid who swings at it with a stick or a bat. Each child is usually given three tries to break the pinata.

The advantage of the pulley is that the adult can control, to some degree, when the pinata is broken so that every child can have a turn "at bat."

Older children are blindfolded, steered in the direction of the pinata, and given three or more tries to break it.

For younger children, forget the blindfold - just hitting the pinata will be enough of a challenge for them. Be sure the pinata is hung securely - pulley, or not.

This activity needs to be closely supervised by adults as children must be kept out of the way of the stick-wielding child. A potential problem can occur if the pinata is partially broken and the contents are dribbling out. Children will rush in to pick up the candy treats while one child is still swinging away!