A Movement Birthday Party Theme

Two years is a long time without posting on this blog. But I'm about to return with regular posts. Short and sweet but easy to digest our latest adventures on Honeysuckle Road 🏡

A birthday party was in order at the beginning of September. Our theme? Movement!! Pictured above is a parachute game called "Parachute Gulp!". All ages dearly loved this one and we'll be saving it for future days when weather keeps us indoors. Check back again for more good times!!

All photos property of KatyTrailCreations©

Gracie's FairyTale

A fun end to Gracie's Party:

Miss Gracie turned 5 this week!!!
We had a lil' birthday concert style party with a new microphone gift addition for her to enjoy at home. Little did we know, Mom had purchased a Pink guitar too.
We also played some games like "stick the jewel on the crown"

And the Birthday Feelie Bag was a hit....Everything in the bag was "Party" related.

• A Birthday napkin
• A Party Hat
• A dessert cup
• A spork (recycling those take out restaurant items)
• A Styrofoam bowl
• A Birthday Card

And the "Singing" was grand!!! Happy Birthday Gracie!

It's October!!

Monday began with making a scarecrow.

Ours is donning a Garfield shirt. Thanks Mr. Ron for the donation.

We caught a tomato worm and planned to feed it for a few days. But it had other plans......

It made its cocoon and so now we wait and watch.

Have you ever painted on paper towels?

 

The highlite of the week was Macoy's #2 Birthday party.

We had to go with a Farm party.

After all, our letter of the week was "F".

 

Sorry if the sideways pic makes you dizzy. Imagine how the "bowling pins" feel

 

 

 

 

Mrs. Wishy-Washy is a favorite.

 

 

Macoy's gift set the theme. A gator with sound buttons.

 

Mom & Dad will know where he is :)



 

Two January Parties

January has been full of birthdays! We had 4 in our family and 2 in the daycare!

For the daycare setting we celebrated with some of the following activities:

 

A "What Will I Be?" Poster. This one is for the 1 year old.

An Artistic Rendering of the 1 year old with a life-size body tracing.

A game of Musical Hats. Who needs chairs???

& everyone loves dress up here!

These are the front & back of our latest game.....

Flower Action Beanbag Toss.

Toss a beanbag onto a flower and perform the action.

Special thanks to this website for the Birthday Memory game. Kids Sparks 

had this download available for free.

The ever-so-popular Pin the Jewel on the Crown. Repeated with the 5-year Old party.

Notice we wrote each child's name on each sticker as ownership is so important in the early years.

Of course what would a party be without Pizza?!

Our homemade variety on bagel thins is pure awesomeness.

Not too hard to chew and just the right amount for a good serving.

Cooking together is a great learning experience you don't want your child to miss out on!

Each child's name is written on the parchment paper underneath each bagel for more of that ownership.

Easy clean up too!

The newest addition to our parties this year will be these

Time Capsules.

(thanks to my father-in-law for the Christmas Card boxes)

With Sarabeth's we included her:

• What Will I Be poster
• Body tracing
• Pictures of the party
• Box label of her treats she shared
• Her crocheted Birthday Crown (my first attempt)

Wishing everyone a blessed 2013!!!!!!!

Brynn's Birthday

We needed a different game.

Brynn can tell when we've done something before and therefore loves a challenge.

I like to think of her as my little ally in what the children will want to participate in.

So.......We did the basic games like

"Hickory Dickory Dock"

Then there were some cool coloring pages.

And there is always the parachute. That is synonymous with our birthday parties.

Learning to make "the mushroom" with the parachute lasted quite awhile.

but a word of caution...

There is a chance of heads banging together if you have a smaller parachute.

We avoided this thankfully.

And we took her favorite activity (instruments) outdoors.

For Birthday treats, we ate fudge stripe cookies. Yum!

But

let's

get

on with

the

reason I am blogging.

For the game I came up with, we needed to hide our eyes.

In case you are unaware, children under age 5 typically don't like scarves around their faces.

So this is a way they will enjoy not peeking.

I searched High and Low for some jewel type stickers but had to resort to these color coding labels.

You must understand, we live in Sedalia, Missouri and have a Walmart, Kmart and

small town dollar stores.

I needed a wide sheet of paper so I resorted to taping 4 of these 11x14 inch sheets together and drew the crown you see. Sorry there's no pattern, just free hand one with pencil and go over it with a marker.

Children won't judge your artistic abilities :)

We placed it on the wall and took turns spinning around each child 2 times with sticker

 at the ready.

Establishing ownership is important for this age group so we labeled each 'jewel' with initials so they could show their parents at the end of the day.

And yes, learning still occurs even during a party.

Recognizing letters

Color recognition

Sharing

Taking turns (Math)

Rhythm (with instrument free play as well as singing "happy birthday")

Listening to Directions

And Spacial awareness when we are turned around without all our sense of vision.

Why did we choose the crown instead of a

pin the tail on the donkey game?

 Because our gift to Brynn was the Princess paper dolls.

Happy #4 Birthday Little Miss Brynn!!!

Sidewalk Fun

For some fun in the driveway, we decided to try out the Fizzing Sidewalk Paint I learned about in another blog... Mama Smiles. You can find the recipe there.

It's a Birthday Party day here at daycare and Hot (again) and before Hurricane Isaac brings us long awaited relief from our horrible drought, we intend to fix up the driveway for a huge welcome!!!

By the way, Lou turned 4 today :)

Just for keeping parents' sanity, aprons were required.

We split up the paint in these recycled lids from laundry detergent containers.

Special thanks to my in-laws for this recycleable we found a special use for in this project.



These bottles were filled with vinegar. Disregard the writing on the bottle that says Bleach H20.

The fun is about to begin.

One shot of vinegar causes the fizzing.

What did we learn in this process????

• Color recognition
• Sensory experience through the scent of vinegar
• Sensory experience through feeling textures in painting different surfaces such as sidewalk, leaves, rocks, fingers :)
• Don't paint our friends, they may express their opinion
• Eye-hand coordination
• Fine motor practice in stirring paint to keep it from setting up
• Sharing space and cooperation

Happy Birthday Miss Lou!!