Birthday Party ideas

[maizy]

My son will be 5 July 30. We want to do a big party.
Its important to us to be frugal, green and fun. Can I run my party idea past you and get feedback and other ideas??

I thought I would get a bunch of bamboo poles, twine and canvass/ blankets and let the kids build forts (experiment with A-frame, t-pee, tri-pod, whatever is fun) Once they build some forts I thought they could paint and decorate rocks. Maybe make them into animals, etc. They could do this inside there forts.
Make hair garlands or crowns made of herbs, vines, leaves, etc.
Then we could make a mud hole and let the kids work on damming with rocks and sticks, making mud pie, etc.
I thought we could buy lots of blocks of ice to keep cool but also use to do an obstacle course. (any other fun ice ideas would be great)
cake, ice cream the usual...
Last we'll do a parade through the neighborhood with bikes, wagons, etc. The kids can wear costumes that I bring out if they chose.
Do I still need to do a gift bag type thing? Ideas I had were seeds, a plaster animal track or a small herb plant for each family???
Would this be fun? Would the mud pit/dam make so parents uncomfortable? Any other ideas or feedback? Thanks

[monkey's mom]

Oh my gosh, I think it sounds AWESOME!

If you do the mud pit, could you make sure to have a baby pool or sprinkler for them to clean off in? And just advise on the invites that bathing suits and getting messy will be part of the plan! Do you have enough towels for all those kids? Or they might bring their own.

I would have them bring the rocks and garlands and crowns home as favors. You could also email pictures to everyone after the fact as another "favor" or as part of an email thank-you note.

What a great party! I hope it's a huge success!

[CalaRei]

I love the frozen brick idea, but I don't know what I'd do with them! Like you said, maybe an obstacle course with frozen bowl "pucks" and brooms? Or if you have a driveway, you could use the icepucks on a shuffleboard drawn with chalk. The ice melting would make it glide!

I saw the other day on a blog someone made ice cube paints by freezing tempura/watered down tempura paint in ice cube trays with a stick in them. This could be fun on a big sheet or roll of paper.

I also like the idea of a nice picture of each child being the favor. I'm almost positive the parents would appreciate this much more than anything else. Maybe have the kids construct frames in anticipation of receiving the picture later.

A parade is super fun - perhaps you could weave garlands into the spokes of bikes, cut up old sheets for flags and banners to be painted and then flown. Have some marching music or instruments to bang as you sing. You could even make these - bottle cap shakers have a very neat sound, pie tins with beans.

[doris401]

For my daughter's 9th birthday she wanted a High School Musical party. We started with invitations that we made ourselves using a picture of the cast that we printed off the internet and pasted on red cardstock. For the party we decorated with lots of red and white - streamers, balloons, red tablecloth, etc. I made schedules" for the "students" that looked like a school schedule and included different "classes". The students started with art class where they all made a craft that kept them busy until all the tardy students arrived! From there they went to Physical Education where we enlisted the help of older brother and his friend to be the teachers. They had the kids doing jumping jack push ups and then of course a short game of basketball! ( and some cheerleading for the girls that wanted to) After PE we went to Science class where there was an experiment set up for the day ( mentos and coca-cola explosion - you can get these instructions on the internet!) We also had some free time and had some word games and word searches that I made on the internet using words from the HSM movie. For the cake I made a megaphone cake and frosted it white with red stripes (fruit rolls work great) and put a #9 and her name on the cake. Of course the soundtrack was playing in the background and we watched the movie with the girls that spent the night. For food I set up a table and made it look like a lunch line at school including styrofoam trays. It was a great time and the first time that we had ever had a boys/girls party. The boys had just as much fun as the girls since all of the activities were geared to both!"

sounds good

[slsurface]

Wow!! Sounds amazing! Can we come?

[Hannahsmummy]

Sounds fabulous!

My daughter just had her 5th birthday and we did some similar things. It was a garden theme.
The kids painted terra cotta pots that they got to take home with them. The only other specific activity that we had was a bug hunt. I hid loads of little bugs (not real!) in the garden and the kids each got a magnifying glass and a jar to collect the bugs in.
We had a BBQ and everyone sat on picnic blankets which I had asked them to bring.
Oh, I did face painting as well.

The party bags were cotton and inside was seeds sticks, bug stickers, a set of marbles, sweets and I can't remember what else!

Even with just a couple of activities, along with lunch, the party was 3 hours long. I'd just say that it looks like you've got loads planned so if it were me, I'd think of fort building and mud pit (both awesome ideas!) as free play IYKIWM.

I agree that you'll need to just let parents know that there will be mud so that everyone is dressed appropriately and maybe brings a change of clothes or a swimsuit, as suggested.

I'm sure the kids will have a blast!

[sunyata]

That sounds like fun! We're having dd's first birthday party at a park, and I found some really cute sheets at Goodwill that we're going to use as tablecloths. We'll either reuse them year after year, or I might sew something out of them after the party. Just another idea for creating less waste (my extended family usually gets throwaway table cloths), though maybe you've thought of this or it's not applicable to you.

[beansricerevolt]

Sounds fun!

I know my DC would love it!

[2M's Mom]

Sounds like all great ideas! I second letting the parents know on the invite that it will be a messy party (the mud pit), and to bring a towel. Regarding favors, I would consider the crafts a favor, and not do anything else. One year we had DD's party at a locally run Children's Museum, and as the favor we gave a donation to the museum.