Who do you invite for children's parties?

[Mala]

For my dd's last birthday party, I asked her to choose three children from her nursery and I called a few more of my friend's children. Now that my dd is at pre-school she will prob. want to call more children from her class. I like inviting my friends children(all of whom my dd knows and plays with, so it's not that she doesn't know/like them). However, some of these non-school friends can be shy at the party as they don't know anyone else apart from my dd(who is ofcourse occupied with the school friends). How do you go about invited people for your children's parties? And ofcourse there's the question of numbers as well. While I think it's important she gets to choose whom she wants at her party, I feel at this age(3 yrs), that I should have some input too. Do you mix friends or just call friends from their children's class? I always feel obliged to call back someon who has invited her too, though again I know not everyone does.

[KTeePee]

When my ds was at preschool/nursery I didn't invite any children from there, unless they were friends outside of there as well -wasn't attached to the school he was going to go to and didn't feel we would stay in touch with the children going to other schools. In Reception i just invited children from his class.

With my dd I did mix school and non-school friends for a few years (she has more non-school friends than ds) but as the parties got smaller I stopped doing that - sometimes have non-school friends around for tea instead

[m1m1rie]

My sister (who is a teacher) told me I couldn't leave out any classmates from DD1's first ever birthday party. We had 32 guests in the end. Never again.

[Mala]

DD has about 18 children in her class, plus a 4-5 children who are in the another class whom she is friends with. She seems to play with mainly the girls, but even if I called only the girls, there would be about 14 children. When I ask her who she wants she says all the girls, bar two. However, I would not feel comfortable calling everyone and leaving these girls out. m1m1rie I understand where you sister is coming from, as I think it's sad to leave some children out, but you are very brave having a party with 32! Ideally I would like to keep it to 10.
I think this might be the last birthday where I mix friends.
KTeePee - I was thinking of a small tea thing for non-school friends, might go with that next year.

[hulababy]

For DD's 4th birthday we had about 25 children in all.

I asked nursery for a list of her friends who she plays with most and got a list of about 8. I then invited friends from outside of nursery, including some friends of ours with children as well (but who DD knows as well) - probably about a dozen or so. I also said that siblings were welcome to join us and a few did from her nursery friends.

Worked out very well.

[willow2]

... children?

[Mala]

[southeastastra]

i would probably get her to invite about 6 of her friends, they're still quite young