I came across some photos the other day of my daughter’s first birthday party. The photos made me smile as I reminisced. We chose a fairy tale theme, and we had so much fun playing games based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. We made a centerpiece for the table that included pricess slippers, a crown and princess hats, a Mother Goose book, confetti, and the cake topper from my wedding cake that I saved all these years. I used a clean black bed sheet as the table cloth, making a good backdrop for the scene.
We made a simple rectangular cake with a princess figure standing on the top, with a #1 candle beside it. You can also make a castle cake. (If you want to see the spectacular castle cake I made for a medieval party, you can find it in the Treasure Vault. It’s called “Castle Cake,” next to the “Life-Sized Cardboard Castle” under the Middle Ages period of the history section.)
The first game we played was to construct houses made of straw, wood, and bricks. We used pine needles for the straw, popsycle sticks for the wood, and large red Lego bricks for the bricks. The materials were in separate baskets, and we had an indoor sandbox to help the houses to stand up in the sand. You can do this activity outside if you don’t have an indoor sandbox, or you can get some sand in a large bin. When you stab popsycle sticks or pine needles into the sand, they stay upright. Then you can blow on it really hard, and see if the three little pigs’ houses fall over.
Next we played nursery rhyme games like “Ring Around the Rosie” and “London Bridge is Falling Down.” The kids really enjoyed when my husband and I made a bridge with our arms and interlocked hands, as you can see in the picture.
We had a wonderful time with this theme, as we read many famous works of literature (short stories), leading up to the themed party.
If you are homeschooling older kids, you can assign a writing project of a fairy tale newspaper. These were immensely popular when I taught in the classrooms before I had kids. I read to you many articles and funny ads to give examples of ideas for kids to write in their fairy tale newspapers in the audio So Your Son Hates to Write. (The writing assignments work well for girls, too!)
And if you have younger kids, they may enjoy our Mother Goose Unit Study!
Tags: birthday parties, fairy tales, party, party ideas, themed birthdays
This is a really great idea. I am hosting a fun Halloween party tomorrow evening. My plan is to have a themed fancy dress competition, a interesting quiz and other cool activities like a pumpkin art contest. I also want to have the memory game and a mini photo booth. There will be hot slices of pizza, mummy hotdogs, spooky vampire buns, cake, fruit bowls, colourful iced cupcakes and so on. Burgers if I can find any. Oh and soft drinks of course.
The themed fancy dress competition sounds fun! 🙂
Hiya again.
It was. We rescheduled it for Saturday evening instead in the end but it was a great event. I planned a fancy dress competition, a pumpkin eating contest and lots of people came to attend. I had a themed timed quiz as well and a lit up dance floor for the guests.
I had soft drinks, cupcakes and hot slices of pizza too. In order to liven things up I asked each person to wear orange and don spooky masks. They were told not to announce their arrival at first. It was a lot of fun. We even played some games.
I like how you pulled the whole theme together!
Sorry I did not see your new reply until Saturday afternoon. I am still amazed at myself too. As previously planned we had a short Halloween quiz and pumpkin bobbing plus other stuff. We also provided a tray of free pumpkin drinks and we had orange cupcakes as well. There was hot pizza slices on a tray and pumpkin burgers.
We all had so much fun. We plan to do the same thing this year but with some changes to the event in question. Instead of making pumpkin burgers we will eat two slices of a pumpkin pie. And play fun games like decorate the pumpkin.
The pumpkin theme would be great for the autumn.
Heya.
I am now planning to run a free Disney themed week soon. I will have a free movie themed quiz for starters in lesson. I have even baked a batch of Disney biscuits on a tray in order for people to eat during the week. There will be lots of nice Disney games and puzzles on display.
Other planned activities include a Disney poem competition and a Disney T shirt contest. I really want to also make a few Disney bookmarks and Disney prizes. We will aim to explore the entire world of Disney movies in classes as usual. And we will be dressed up as the characters in the Disney movies in addition.
Sounds like a fun themed week!