How to invite to birthdays when they are not in the same class...please help

I am going insane trying to decide how to do their birthday party this year. This is the first birthday we have had to deal with them being in different classes..they are in 1st grade. So my dilemma is that they do not have alot of friends outside of school and I don't know how to do the invites. My family lives in Canada and that is where all of their cousins are. We went there last year for their birthday so it was easy. So this year other than a couple of friends I wanted to invite their classes to their party. The kids want to have it at pump it up.
How do I do this when there are 25 kids in each class??? I am at a loss of how to book the party because I am freaking out about possibly 50 kids saying they will come (not likely but you never know)....then the possiblity of many coming from one of their classes but hardly any from another. I have no clue about how many kids to book this party for which I need to do before I send the invites.
If any of you have been in a similar situation how did you handle it?
I would absolutely appreciate any ideas because their birthday is around the corner and it's driving me nuts

Thanks
Brenda

 

We gave DS#1 a limit on the number of kids. SInce many of his friends are from the neighborhood, we limited the number he could invite from school. Ask them who they play with at school and start the list from there. Good luck.

 

I forgot to mention part of the problem is I spoke with one of their teachers and she said their policy is if we send invites to school it has to be for the whole class

 

We did a similar party when C&E were in kindergarten. We invited all the kids and there were 22 in each class. I think we ended up with 25-30 kids, but it was still cheaper than 2 separate parties would have been. The local place we went just tacked on an amount per kid past a certain number. We didn't have to let them know until a couple of days before what the final count would be. Most places will give you a date that they want the final count. We went with the cheapest package possible and were able to bring in our own cakes, so I think it ended up being about $10 per kid (this was 5 years ago).

 

I gave my kids a limit on the number each could invite & we used evite to send the invitations so we didn't have to send them to school. You could maybe invite just the girls from your daughter's class & just the boys from your son's class.

 

Last year I gave them a limit of friends to invite and we mailed the invitations because our school has the same policy regarding sending invites mot school.

 

I'm inviting thru Facebook and actually no kids from either one of their classes. We are just having a small family party and going on a trip for their bday present

 

I think you've gotten some good suggestions. Our school has the same policy about invitations at school must be for the whole class. This just isn't feasible for us, but I've been lucky to have some really nice and understanding teachers. I have been able to send invitations to school in my children's homework folder and the teacher takes them out out and puts them in the invited children's folder. The invited kids don't know they have an invitation until they get home and their parents go through the folder. I don't know if this is possible at your school.

 

I agree tell them they each have to pick kids. I would decide on what number of kids you are happy with and then let them each invite half of that, maybe with a couple extra in case of people not being able to make it. So say you'd like 20 kids tell them they can pick 11 or 12 each. That way even if all of them can come (unusual in my experience) you won't have many over what you want.

It's annoying that you won't be able to just send invitations into school but maybe the teacher can give you an email list, or maybe they would be able to do as pp said and put the invites into book bags or something.

 

We mailed them home (got addresses from the school directory- luckily everyone they wanted to invite was listed!). We limited it to they each invited 3 friends and then agreed on one (a mututal friend that is beloved by both girls) so we had 7 kids plus my two. So nine total. The location we picked capped it at 10 so it was perfect.

My DD are 'small group' kinda kids so it worked out. They each picked who they would invite- they share a class. But we did not invite all the girls even with 10 kids (they have 16 girls in the class).

 

When the girls were in 2 different classes they just invited the girls. We tried both classes one year and I almost went crazy.

 

One year we did evites. Last year we mailed the invites. Both times I let the girls pick 6 friends to invite plus joint friends. When my girls turned 6 i made them invite some neighborhood kids but did not when they turned 7. I figured they where old enough to pick who they wanted. I did ask if i felt they left someone off.

 

We didn't have access to email addresses or snail mail address/phone numbers. We invited same sex in each of the kids' classrooms. The max number if everyone came would have been abou 19 kids. Only 3 kids showed up. We do not have high numbers around here. Good luck!

 

Especially if it's Pump It Up, I would go ahead and invite everybody. We had 35 kids at Pump It Up for A&S's 5th birthday (I think that was the one -- they had it at PIU three years in a row!) and it was chaotic, but still fun and manageable. I love the staff there, at least at our local one -- they're so helpful.

The other nice thing about PIU is that it's so free-form, kids are all just running around like crazy and it doesn't really matter if more kids show up from one class than another.

We did have to pay extra for each child over the theoretical 20-kid limit (or maybe it was 25 kids), but it was still cheaper than two separate parties, and way easier.