I have found that when it comes to party rentals for toddlers. there isn’t much out there catering specifically to this young aged group. As a mom of two young boys under 3 years old, I got to thinking about what I would want to consider when I rent the entertainment for the littles at my home parties or outside events. I’ve always been involved in party planning for all kinds of events, small and large. It’s something I’ve always had a passion for even since high school.
In my experience of event planning I saw a lot of entertainment brought in for kids that just didn’t seem worth the money spent. The entertainment was not engaging for all the littles and toddlers who didn’t want to sit still for a puppet show, magic show, or other visual forms of entertainment. I saw a lot of parents who still had to participate right alongside their kids to make sure they were occupied enough, focused enough, quiet enough, or whatnot.
Now that I have my own kids, I am always considering other peoples’ toddlers even more attentively. Especially when I am involved in planning or organizing events. As I mentioned before, I started to consider what I would want the hired entertainment to provide for me and my kids. I then came up with an entertainment concept that would cover all the points that I would personally want if I were to rent the entertainment for my own parties. This is how the project Bambino Soft Play was created. Here I share my top four considerations.
The top four things I considered as a mom when I created Bambino Soft Play for toddler party rentals:
1. I want my kids to be in a managed area where I don’t have worry about them easily disappearing to who-knows-where.
We’re all wary of losing track of our kids out in public! Especially us moms with high energy boys. We can turn our heads for a moment and in a blink of an eye, one of our children somehow made a trip across the world. That under-developed world-explorer is one of every mama’s fear. Not only is it a heart-stopper when our littles take off out of sight, but it’s also extremely embarrassing! Especially when people around us realize we lost our child. You know that all kinds of judgement passes through other peoples’ minds seeing a mom who has lost her kid.
I want the party rentals for entertainment that I rent out to be contained space in order to eliminate exactly these kinds of heart-stopping and embarrassing moments!
2. I want party rentals that are age-appropriate and would actually entertain the youngest kids.
As I mentioned, I have seen too many party rental entertainment concepts that don’t do a great job of entertaining their kids.They require a lot of parental involvement to maintain control. With jump houses for example, big kids trample little kids. It’s a great party rental concept for just the bigger kids but not the little kids. But if that’s the only entertainment for kids at the party, do we tell our littler kids that they can’t have fun too? Or magic shows for example. Our littles don’t understand what’s happening in magic shows. They might be more curious about the person doing the magic tricks than the tricks themselves. That lasts only a moment before they are very soon bored with that. And if we make them sit through the rest of the show or nag them to pay attention, they may get frustrated and disrupt the whole show.
Party rentals for toddlers need to be geared towards the development level of this age group. The whole reason I put together Bambino’s soft play space is to give our littles opportunities to create the entertainment themselves. Forcing entertainment on them is exhausting for all parties involved. Much like a jumpy house provides entertainment for kids that are a little bit older, the soft play rentals are more age-appropriate entertainment for the littler kids.
3. I want party rentals that will expend some of my kids’ energy.
I have two boys. Did I say boys?? Yes, boys. And they have more energy than my husband and I combined. So I know that if they are given or allowed an activity where they can expend this energy, they will be happy boys. That means that we parents always get a parenting breather when our kids have channeled and spent their pent-up energy.
This is SO much more effective entertainment than say a puppet or magic show or an arts and crafts project. My boys don’t want to stay still! They want to expend the energy they don’t know what to do with! As their mom, I would rather put my money on entertainment that expends this physical energy instead of trying to control their energy with sitting down to watch something or craft something.
Little kids are not always in the mindset to sit and be creative. To try to make them sit and be creative when their minds aren’t there is going to be an exhausting effort. But I can always bank on physical activities keeping them entertained!
4. I want party rentals that allows me to confidently set my toddlers down to crawl and not need to look for the potential dangers they might create for themselves.
If I’m at an event or a party, or if I’m hosting an event or party, I want to be sure that my littles and my guests’ littles are safe. They need to be in a safe space when they crawl or move around. I don’t want to have to spend my time closely watching what my toddlers crawl over, what they might reach to put in their mouths, or what they might try to pull themselves up on that could come toppling down.
The soft play spaces are designed to cater to kids’ physical activities in an environment where they can’t hurt themselves or other kids. Definitely not an easy problem to solve when coming up with entertainment solutions for our littles but we found the solution we were looking for within the concept of soft play spaces!
More About Our Party Rentals: Soft Play Spaces
The soft play spaces I put together are surrounded with a play gate to designate the space set apart especially for our littles. The play space created within the bordering gate is lined with soft play matting to put a safe barrier between the toddlers and the ground. And the big bonus for this is that not only does this matting serve as a safety barrier but a sanitary barrier as well!
Everything within this play space is ultra-light, soft and squishy. Everything can be crawled on, over, under, etc. The balls in the ball pen are extremely light and airy. These are the safest play items we could want for our toddlers!
The gate not only keeps the littles in the entertainment space but also keeps the older kids out. We never have to worry about our littles being unexpectedly trampled on by the older kids who would love to blow through like a hurricane on a mission. I know I’m not the only mom who doesn’t want to have to worry about high-energy kindergarteners and elementary age kids absent-mindedly running over my kiddos!
To see pictures of our play spaces visit us at Bambino Soft Play.