Make Your Grandchild's Half-Birthday All Yours

Grandchildren's birthday parties can be a lot of fun, especially when the kids are small. However, when children get bigger, and start inviting entire classrooms of first- or second-graders out for a day of gymnastics or an afternoon at the arcade, it can become harder for grandparents to get in on the action. But there’s another, often-ignored opportunity for you to take charge of a special celebration all your own — the "half-birthday." You can carve out some memorable one-on-one time with your grandchildren by starting this tradition six months before or after their next birthdays.

Whether you throw a small party, go on an outing together, or mark the day in a different way, half-birthday celebrations can become cherished events that you and your grandchildren look forward to year after year.

Going Halfsies

If a party is on your half-birthday agenda, remember to go all out as you go halfway:

• Start the party at half past the hour, and send an invitation that’s been cut in half.
• Make half a birthday cake, or bake a cake that's half chocolate and half vanilla.
• Cut foods in half — sandwiches, pizza, hamburgers, or hot dogs — and fill cups only half way.
• Sing every other word of the “Happy Birthday” song, and challenge your grandchild to blow out only half the candles on the cake.
• Print out some coloring pages from the internet or take some from a coloring book and cut the pages in half. Have your grandchildren and guests color one side, then match them up for some inspired creations.
• Play Mad Libs, in which your grandchild completes a story by filling in the blanks with appropriate (or, more likely, inappropriate) words, while learning how mixed-up and hilarious it can be when they only control “half the story.”
• Half-wrap their gifts. If you bought your grandchild an outfit, wrap the shirt in one package and the pants in another. If it's a toy, wrap enough of the package so that they can see it's a toy, but not enough that they can tell exactly what it is.

Two Days in One

If you don't want to throw a party — maybe you just want to keep your grandchild to yourself on his or her special day — you can maintain the "half" theme in other ways:

• Each year, you and your grandchild can divide the day between two favorite activities — like going to the park in the morning and making cookies in the afternoon, or mall shopping followed by a blockbuster movie, or fishing before heading to a ballgame. For older kids, make the day especially meaningful by spending half your time doing something your grandchild loves to do, and the other half giving back by volunteering together with a local charitable organization.
• End each half-birthday by adding a new pair of pages to a scrapbook of your days together. Each of you, of course, will design half of each two-page spread of the treasured keepsake.
• A "half" day can be fun, but the most important thing about the half-birthday tradition is “just between us” bonding with your grandchildren. A great way to do that is to introduce new things to each other. A young grandchild could show you how to make a fort or race Hot Wheels cars, a tween could teach you to play Guitar Hero or help you sit through High School Musical, and an older child could help you take some cuts at a batting cage or scale the wall at a climbing gym. Likewise, you can show kids how to do one of your favorite things, whether it's painting, golfing, yoga, poker, or quilting.

As your new tradition catches on and becomes an annual event, you and your grandchild will teach each other a lot of great lessons, but none more important than this — there’s always an occasion to celebrate, and if not, you can always make one up!