Seeking Birthday Party Activity Ideas

J.,

Buy sand pails (kids) $1 or biglot stores... buy some foam stickers... have them decorate the pails... great for summer or as a trash bin for their room, or as a toy holder for the small pieces. etc.

what about sand in a bottle, different colors, sort of like the ones at Knotts Berry Farm. :-)

Good luck

have fun with it...

Family Fun (.com) will have endless suggestions, but one that's always good for every age is simply the old red licorice "necklace". Get the kind that's long & thin ropes and put out assorted round cereals, etc. and let the kids string, wear and eat their necklaces.
:) M.

You can always do large beads at a station. Make necklaces or bracelets. And do lights in a tree or suspended from something as Tinkerbell. Have fun.

Play-Doh and cookie cutters, and rolling pins are great for 3 - 8 year olds. You can find cookie cutters that are shaped like fairies, trees, and flowers.

This wouldn't be part of a station but at my sons 3 year instead of a cake I made cupcakes and frosting and had the kids decorate their own. I bought mini m and m's, sprinkles, minin chocolate chips. All the kids loved it. Good luck!

Hi J., I have a couple ideas, I would have a craft station. and a face painting station, I went to one of my daycare kids 3rd birthday party and it was a bob the Builder theme, but she had order all the craft supplies from Oriental Trading, and the kids had so much fun with that it took parents to help but we had fun too. When my kids were small I used to get all their party needs from orientla Trading, I still get their googy bags and candy from there for my daycare kids. J. L.

Hi -

At my daughter's third bday, we had a bounce house and three stations:
*nail painting - they loved it!
*tatoos
*coloring
It worked out wonderfully, because there were so many options. I also invited the girls to wear their princess outfits if they wanted, and had extras on hand.

Enjoy!

Something that always worked for us was to allow the children to "decorate" cupcakes or cookies. It is safe and fun for them. You can still have your special cake. Just set up a station with cupcakes or cookies along with icings, a plastic knife for each child with their own paper plate to put icing onto (so that they are not licking and putting their knife back into the icing that others will use) and candies, sprinkles or other decorating goodies. They will have fun, but most of them would be happy to take their goodies home and not get too full of them at the party.
Another thing you could do is to have them decorate party hats or tiaras. This could be done with paper hats or plastic tiaras and paper decorations.
Good luck.
K. K.

Here are my ideas:
1. Decorate crowns. You can buy the foam crowns or make ones out of paper.
2. I always make a coloring book for a party favor with the theme included. But at the last party I found one coloring page online that I really liked, put ________'s 3rd Birthday on it and printed it on cardstock. Then the kids water colored on it. They loved it!
3. Make wands! I cut dowels in half and hot glued felt stars to the sticks. The kids can then use glue to glue on glitter.

Have fun!

I think you could have a "Tinker Table". It would be a place where the kids could "tinker" just like in the movie. You can just put a bunch of tinker toys for the kids to play with, but not necessarily take home. The playdough and craft ideas people have would also work with a "tinkering" theme. There are many ideas that you could put there that would work.

I also liked the idea someone had with "pixie dust". My DD's preschool has taken sugar and added food coloring to it. They made many different colors and put them in squeeze bottles (those generic clear ones for ketchup/ mustard/etc you can buy at Smart & Final). Then the kids created designs as best as 3 & 4 year olds can do in very small clear cups with lids.

The only thing is they used liquid food coloring and some of the sugar clumped. I don't if it would've worked better to prepare it several days ahead of time and really work to ensure it doesn't clump. Or, I might recommend finding powder food coloring, but I think you might have to order that online. Either way, it's a favorite with the kids!

Sounds like your DD will have a fabulous birthday. Great job mom! Have fun!

You can have the kids go 'fishing' for Tinkerbell fireflies. Print and cut out firefly patterns on paper (cardstock works best). Glue a magnet to the back of the paper.

Have the kids make their magic fishing poles/wands with craft sticks and string. Attach a paper clip to the opposite end. The paper clip will stick to the firefly.

Hello J.,

One of the stations you could do pixie dust in bottles. I don't know what its called, maybe sand glasses. But, I see them at places like Knott's Berry Farm.

There is colored sand or something like sand and the kids put it in fun shaped glass or could be plastic bottles.

I am sure you could find this at a craft store. That way every child leaves with their very own pixie dust.

Have fun!
M.

We went to a party where there was a big bowl of fruit loops and yarn that was precut to make necklaces and braclets. The kids loved it and then ate it throughout the party.

How about one of the stations being making Tinkerbell wings? You can cut the wings out of some sturdy poster boards, and then buy feathers or other do-dads to glue onto the wings. Punch some holes in them so you can tie some string through them to tie onto the child. I've never done it before, but thought it might work. Good luck and Happy Birthday to you and your daughter!

Maybe not for this particular birthday, but in the future rent the biggest bouncy house you can find and set it up at your local park. Those toddlers will bounce for hours, come back for treats and fruit and bounce some more! Guaranteed bedtime by 8pm, with time for Mommy and Daddy!!!!

How about making magic wands (aka Tinkerbell wands) using pipe cleaners and cut out shapes that the kids can decorate and glue on the pipe cleaner? Something pretty easy, fairy (haha) inexpensive and easy to do. Use stars, circles, moon shapes and give them some glitter glue and crayons to decorate. Maybe even have a couple ribbons they can tie on too. Have fun!

You could make "fairie finders" (is that hoe u spell it?) with 2 toilet paper rolls taped together and a long string to go around your neck kind of like binoculars. Decorate with Tinkerbell and other stickers. Get some gold glitter for the fairie dust and sprinkle it all around the yard (I know, I know, messy!! But fun!) and try to find tinkerbell and her friends. The good thing about this is that when a few of the kids finish super fast, they can play with their finders while u finish with the other kids and or clean up.

Playdoh is great at this age. I bought a bucket of 100 cookie cutters at linen n things and my pre-schoolers love to use them with playdoh you can buy some or even make it at home. I also would do something with glitter for tinkerbell dust. Wands would be fun too. Go to Joanne's or Michaels craft store they have lots of stuff there.

I teach Kindergarten, and I know that kids love bubbles. You can give each kid their own little bottle, and also have wands that are bigger and make different shapes. You can even fill a wading pool and use a hula hoop to make giant bubbles. The kids can take turns standing in the middle and you can make a bubble around them.

I'm sure you've already received a lot of great ideas from the other wonderful mommies. Here's one more - http://disney.go.com/fairies/activities/activities.html.

Enjoy :)

We've done tattoos at the parties and the kids love it.
I've seen them at Alin party supply. We just got some
Pooh ones for our party. They might have Tinkerbell
as well. Have fun

For my daughter's princess party, the girls decorated sugar cookies (heart shaped), decorated a frame with fairy tale stickers (from Michael's, the foam kind that come in a bucket) and had their picture taken with the birthday girl and their barbies that they brought (to go in the frame). We also had a bounce house.

Hello J..

One station you can set up is a T-shirt design station.

Go to the 99c store or to big lots and purchase plain white t-shirts.

Go to Michaels an purchase t-shirt paint. It dries instantly and has a cool 3d effect when applied to the shirts.

It makes for a fun activity that parents can assist their kids with.

Another option is to have a mini manicure station where a couple mom volunteers can polish the girls' nails.

You can do fake tatoos for the boys at the party.

Good Luck.