bday party invite list etiquette

brooksidebride

I haven't been on in a long time, so I apologize if this was recently posted (I did a quick scroll and didn't see it recently)...

What is the etiquette for inviting kids from your child's preschool class to a bday party?  In that...  If you can invite the whole class... that's great... and easy... I assume you can just pass out invites at the school.  But what if you can't invite the entire class, and there are really just 3 kids out of about 15 that your child is close friends with that you plan to invite? Is that okay? Is it okay that possibly on Monday just those 3 kids and DD will be talking about the party? And if I do just invite the 3, it's probably not cool to give the invites out at school, but rather I should mail them or privately hand to parent in the parking lot or something... ?

74dragonfly

Different schools have different policies. I'd ask the teacher. I think it is fine to just ask 3. IMO it is only bad when you invite 10 and leave out five.
As for the discussion at school my daughter can barely explain what happened that day much less a few days ago. I doubt they would discuss much.

ldcoffel

I think it is fine, just invite privately.

azaretsky

We had a very similar situation a couple of weeks back. We invited the few people we wanted in private (over phone, email) and then had cupcakes for the whole class. This way, all the kids got to celebrate DS's birthday with him, but only the ones we wanted to invite came to his actual party. This really worked well.

ncsumommy

Honestly there are only 3 kids that DS really wants to invite as well.  At least when he prompted, that's who he names.  However, it seems like there's a decent amount of kids that probably wouldn't come anyway so I figure by inviting the entire class, I'm "doing the right thing" PLUS probably going to end up with only half or so anyway.  

DS has been invited to a few parties where it was only a few kids and then I'm sure not been invited to some.  It's ok either way but I REALLY do want DS to be a kid that includes everyone.  I feel like we can do that right now.  Now, if all 16 kids show up, I might change my mind next year  

kpips20

We're in the same boat. Our school doesn't have a set policy on party invites and DS only wants to invite 3 kids from his class out of 20. I sent the invite to the one family we know and plan to give invites to the other 2 moms after drop off or pick up tomorrow (in the parking lot away from the school). I think it's really only a problem if you're inviting most kids and leaving out a small number.

jlw2505

Some schools have policies that if you don't invite the whole class you can't pass out the invites at school.  My kids daycare and PreK never had any rules around it.  Both had parent folders and you just stuck the invites into the folders (or asked the teacher to assist you with this).  The kids are not handed the invites and only see them when their parents show them.  You can invite 1 kids from class, 10 or the whole class - totally up to you as it should be.  In my DD's kindy class, we have gotten the invites in many ways - sent home in the Friday folders that the teachers (or parent volunteers) fill with whatever info we need and the homework reading for the weekend, email and snail mail.  I have always just stuck the invites in the kids parent folders at school regardless of how many kids I am inviting.  For my older DD this will be the 1st time that I mail the invites as not all of the kids we will invite are in her kindy class so I think it will just be easier.  I have the school directory that includes all snail and email addresses so its easy to do