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Just a note:
We didn't do the "big birthday party" every year.
Our children
only got a big party for their 5th, 10th and 15th birthdays. Other than
that, they could invite two or three friends to join us for birthday
cake and ice cream after dinner on their birthday. So when we did have a
large party, we spent plenty of time planning and producing it together
and made it memorable.
Family
Birthday Traditions
In
our family, the night before a birthday is the time to put up
a "Happy Birthday" banner and maybe some balloons or
streamers. There is always something special so that the
person celebrating a birthday will wake up to wonderful
greeting and acknowledgement of his or her special day. Some
families have a special plate that the birthday person uses
for a dinner of his or her choice. Others may have flowers or
a special collection of birthday cards waiting. Does your
family have a tradition to welcome birthdays? If not, start
one with the next birthday in line.
Magic Party
"Magic" Cake
Mix 1 egg white, 1 1/2 tsp. sugar, and drop
of food coloring. Beat until foamy. Line glass with foil on
top of cake. Put a fe chunks of dry ice in glass and pour
foamy egg mixture over it. Just prior to singing "Happy
Birthday", pour hot tap water into glass. It will steam and
then bubble over for a real "magic effect". (Keep dry ice away
from children and follow directions for safe handling.)
MAGIC GAME
Draw a magician on poster-board. Cut spaces
between his teeth. Roll marbles or rubber balls and try to get
them through the spaces.
Hire a local magician!
Give small magic tricks as favors.
Magic Hat version of a cake
Unicorn cake
Use a lamb cake mold and add an ice cream
cone for the horn.
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Teddy Bear Birthday Ideas for a One-Year-Old
Make a Bear Cave
Use blankets, sheets etc.
over chairs or even a table to make a bear cave where children
can play. Fill it with blankets and pillows. Have each child
bring a teddy bear as a guest
Make a sign that says “Bear
Cave” or “Bear-thday Cave”.
Have a “Bear Read-In”
Provide teddy bear picture
books or story books available and have adults help by reading
bear stories to children. (Get some from the library if you
don’t have any at home.)
Books about Bears include:
Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Baloo from Jungle Book,
Rupert, Marmalade, Care Bears, Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears,
Little Brown Bear
and
Koala Bears…
Make Party Hats for the Bears
Cut a pie-shaped wedge out of
a paper plate and roll it to form a cone. Staple it into
place. Decorate the hats or let children, who are old enough
to use crayons, decorate the party hats for their bears.
BEAR-Y GOOD SNACKS
Provide
Teddy Grahams™ for
snacks. For older children,
gummy bears would be
fun too.
Young children do better with
a cookie than they do with cake or even cupcakes. If you can
get a teddy bear cookie cutter and some refrigerator dough for
cut out cookies, that might be the best idea for a cake
alternative.
If
you’ve got a lot of adult help, one activity might be letting
the older children frost and sprinkle edible decorations on
their bears
Party Favors
Instead of filling bags with
little party favors that are not safe for children under
three, or giving them a bag of candy, make bear hugs and
kisses.
Enlarge the pattern above and
cut two bears out of felt. Put a little stuffing inside (even
a couple of cotton balls). Glue the edges together. (It’s
faster than sewing.) For the “under three” crowd, use a marker
to add a face. For those who won’t chew and swallow the nose
and eyes, you can glue pink felt circles on ears and a circle
of a contrasting color of felt for the muzzle. Glue a pom pom
nose and two beads for eyes. Tie a short ribbon around the
neck of either style bear. Tie a single Hersheys™ Kiss in a
little piece of tulle or netting and tie that to the arm of
the bear.
ACTIVITIES
Blow bubbles. Children
can blow bubbles and/or chase bubbles blown by an adult. For
more bubbles, use a bubble wand with multiple holes or try
other things like a wire whisk. (If you want to spend money
for bubbles, party stores generally have bubble machines
available.) For an added souvenir of the party, get or make
some fancy bubble wands. Bent heavy gauge wire will work. No
matter what shape the wand is, bubbles will still be round.
Stick the Nose on the Bear
Draw a picture of a bear or
poster of one that is big enough to use for a game. Give each
child a fairly large pom pom. Give each child a different
color use pieces of tape with names. Attach a piece of double
stick tape to the pom pom, (The kind with foam in the middle
works best.) In turn, each child, is blindfolded and headed in
the direction of the bear picture which is taped to a door or
wall at child-level. They each stick their pom pom nose on the
picture. The nose closest to the correct spot wins a prize.
TEDDY BEAR CUPCAKES
Cupcakes are easier for young
children to handle than a pieces of cake on a plate with a
fork. Even at that, they will often lick the frosting off and
leave the rest of the cupcake.
To make a teddy bear cupcake,
frost it and place a vanilla wafer cookie toward the bottom of
the face. Use a little frosting to hold chocolate chips in
place for the eyes and nose. Other small candies will also
work. Put two Lifesaver™ candies in the frosting for ears.
TEDDY BEAR CAKE IDEAS
To make a teddy bear cake,
you can bake it in several pans and put pieces together like a
puzzle. The one in the photograph to the left was done with
two round cakes, an oblong cake cut into quarters and three
cupcakes (for ears and muzzle).
You could also do just the
face of a a teddy bear with a large circular cake and cupcake
ears. (For muzzle depth, you could bake a cake layer in a pie
pan that is smaller than the round cake pan used for the head
and add it as a top layer to the bottom portion of the face.
Larger ears could be made by baking a small round cake and
cutting it in half.)
For either design, use
frosting to hold pieces in place. For larger, unusually-shaped
cakes, you can cover a board or baking pan with foil to hold
the cake. Frost the cake and add decorative details. Gum drops
will work for eyes and a nose.
PRIZES
Reach into the bear’s pot of
honey. Wrap a coffee can in brown paper and put some gold
tissue paper inside it. Bring the tissue paper over the top
lip of the can and roll it over the edge to make it look like
a pot of honey. Fill the Bear’s pot of honey with games
prizes.
Ideas for Game Prizes:
Bear
stickers
Small
stuffed bears (for the
under three crowd, these shouldn’t have eyes or other parts
which can be chewed off or removed.)
Small
board books with
stories about bears.
Small packages of
gummy
bears
Go on a Bear Hunt.
Hide pictures of bears,
stuffed teddy bears, or bear-shaped paper cut-outs. Let
children search for them like an egg hunt. For older children,
you can use clues or hide them in harder places.
GAME
Fishin’ for Bear Food
Bears like to eat fish, so
see how many fish you can catch. Cut fish shapes out of
construction paper and attach a paper clip to each fish. Tie
string to a stick and use it as a fishing pole. Instead of a
hook, tie a magnet to the end of the string. Put the fish you
catch in a bucket and offer them to the teddy bears. Fish can
be placed an a few layers of blue plastic wrap made to look
like a stream.
ACTIVITY
Make bear masks or bear puppets from paper plates.
Draw a bear face on a paper
plate and color it. Cut some ears out of construction paper
and staple them to the plate. For a mask, have an adult cut
out eye holes and add a piece of elastic to hold the mask on a
child’s head. (Staple elastic to plate.)
For a
puppet, follow the same process, but staple half of a paper
plate to the top half of the back of the bear face. Put your
hand in the half plate to make your bear puppet move.
BEAR TOSSING GAME
Feed the bear. Use the
drawing at the left to make a bear face on poster-board. Cut
out the mouth area. Attach the poster-board to a corrugated
cardboard box and make sure that there is an opening in the
box behind the mouth of the bear. Each child takes a turn,
tossing one to three bean bags, rolled-up socks or rubber
balls into the bear’s mouth. There can be a prize for the most
items tossed into the bear’s mouth or kids can just toss for
fun.
Decorate with Bear Mylar Balloons.
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PIRATE PARTY
by Kas Winters
Pirates are a popular theme and pirate birthday parties can be fun for
children. When our youngest son was 5 we celebrated with a pirate party and
everyone had a grand time. (I actually had one mom complain that I had set
the party bar high and her kids would expect the same; but I spent almost no
money on the party and all the time I put into over a month of preparation
was one-on-one time spent with my son doing everything together for his
special day.
Invitations:
Invitations can be created on a computer to look like treasure maps with an
"X" marks the spot showing the location of your home or the party location.
Use a type font reminiscent of pirates and let the words in the invitation
"sound" like a pirate: Ahoy shipmate, captain, buried treasure,
swashbucklers, walk the plank, landlubbers and buccaneers, etc.. Print invitations
on tan colored parchment, roll them like scrolls and tie them with a ribbon.
Hand them out or mail them in small cardboard tubes.
Dress-up:
Invite kids to dress
as pirates, or supply them with pirate hats or scarves. Pirate party hats are available in
party stores, but we just made ours from newspaper as shown in a photo
below. Eye patches are also available at party supply locations or you can make
patches with felt and elastic. We gave each child a hat and an eye patch.
Our older son was available and he used non-toxic paints to paint washable
tattoos on kids arms.
Decorations and setting:
This pirate greeted guests as they came through the door. He is made of
clothing stuffed with newspapers. His wooden leg is a broom handle.
We cut off the top of a 2 liter plastic bottle and covered it with
aluminum foil which we also shaped to form a hook. His sword is
cardboard covered with foil. The head is a plastic bag stuffed with
crumpled newspaper and covered with a full rubber mask and a scarf. We
added an ear ring and eye-patch. The pirate flag was pieces of felt
glued to a scrap of black fabric.
We had a pirate music playing in the background when children arrived.
As each child entered, they received an activity pack with a paper boat,
their hat and eye patch, pirate pictures to color, a triangular piece of
construction paper for a game and a piece of parchment for making a map.
Party decorations
varies from room to room. In one corner, we created an island. Palm trees
were made from empty carpet rolls that we got from the alley behind a carpet
store. We added construction paper leaves and stood the palm trees in a
corner. The island was made of blankets wrapped around the bottoms of the
"trees". We made treasure chests out of boxes, added metallic trims and
filled them with plastic bead jewelry, sea shells and gold foil-covered
chocolate coins and placed these around the island. We also decorated with
tissue paper flowers and an anchor cut from poster board. Maps of the world
were on the wall and a variety of games were on the island. We placed a
parrot decoration in one of the trees.
The dining room
table was decorated with the cake and items that looked like they might have
been on a pirate ship such as brass candle holders, a rolled piece of
parchment paper, feather-quill "pens", maps, jugs and a "telescope" that was
made by gluing wooden spools together--from small to larger sizes.
Games and Activities:
The games and
activities went on simultaneously with adults and older children helping in
each area. We had more than 25 small children and this gave them all things
that they could choose to do without waiting in line or getting bored.
Children could play games over and over so we let it be simply fun and their
weren't game prizes, but each child got a "Booty" bag with goodies to take
home and we broke a Parrot Piñata toward the end of the party.
In another corner,
we covered a table with sheets and labeled it "Captain's Quarters - A
Pirate Den". Inside we had baskets of crayons and and surfaces so they
could color their pirate pictures or make maps.
Pirate Ships:
The back yard was full of empty cardboard boxes which made great pirate
ships. They were the hit of the party.
Float Your Boat:
Also in the back yard, we set up a tent with a small wading pool inside and
adult supervision. Here, the children floated their paper boats until they
got too soggy to float anymore.
Tape a tail to the Sea Dragon:
For this version of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey", we drew and colored our
own sea dragon on poster-board and taped him to an arcadia door. Each
child was blindfolded and handed their triangular piece of construction
paper and given a chance to see how close they could get it to the tip of
the sea dragon's tail.
Note in a bottle:
We had empty plastic milk jugs and clothespins with "Help" notes attached to
them. Children stood with a clothespin and "nose height" and tried to get it
to fall inside the bottle.
Toss the Fish to the Whale:
We drew a very simple whale on a piece of poster board and cut a hole for
his very large mouth. and them taped it to the open top of a cardboard box.
We set the box on it's side so that children could toss bean-bag fish in the
mouth of the whale to feed him. We made bean-bag fish with fabric scraps and
use fabric paint to squirt eyes and fins on each one.
Pearl into oyster toss:
We stapled two Styrofoam™ pates together to form oyster shells and lined
them up on our island. Styrofoam™ balls were the pearls and children
tried to toss them and get the pearls to land in the shells.
For some of the older children, there was a table with a Peter Pan jigsaw
puzzle and cards to play "Go Fish".
Refreshments:
Raft favors were made from pretzel sticks held together with
powdered sugar and milk frosting. A Lifesaver™
and fish crackers are on
board. We used a gumdrop to hold a toothpick with a sail nametag.
Snacks included gold-foil covered chocolate coins,
Goldfish™
crackers and fish gummies.
(I saw an idea for putting gummy fish in blue Jell-O™ but the fish
got soggy and tasted funny, so I wouldn't recommend doing that.) We also
made cut-out cookies that were shaped like fish and starfish. The
beverage was lemonade (to prevent scurvy, of course).
Pirate Ship Cake:
I started with a large sheet cake, an 8" round cake and a small 6" round
cake. I cut the large round cake in half and put the two halves together
with frosting in the middle. Then I and cut an area out of the sheet
cake to place the two halves (the ship) in the water. I cut an area out
of the sheet cake on one end for the small round cake, which became an
island. The piece of cake that I removed became a part of the ship.
Everything was held together with frosting. Then I frosted the sheet
cake with blue, the island with green, and the boat with chocolate
frosting. I pushed Lifesaver™ candies into the frosting to make a
sea serpent and decorated the island with cake decorations like palm
trees and small treasure boxes. Sails for the ship were paper placed on
bamboo skewers. The portholes were white Lifesavers™ .
Booty Bag Favors:
We made our own drawstring bags and stenciled the word "booty" on each
one. They were filled with gold foil-covered chocolate coins, a yarn
octopus (that we made from yarn scraps), an alligator clip (made from
green vinyl and a clip clothespin, a miniature plastic sword (toothpick
style), a miniature plastic treasure chest with a few beads for jewels,
a small toy compass, a little kaleidoscope that looked like a spyglass,
a miniature plastic skeleton (his birthday is in the fall so these were
easy to find) and a colorful paper umbrella (the type used for fancy
tropical beverages. (The under three guests didn't get the little items
that were choking hazards.)
Don't forget to talk like a pirate! Have fun
making a treasure hunt activity, and wearing newspaper pirate hats. You
might even read something about pirates to get a real story. With the
popularity of Pirate movies today, there are many possible games, prizes
etc. that could be integrated into a party.
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