Tag Archives: kids party ideas

early education & play, imagination, kids party ideas, parenting

Make Your Own Costume Party

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With a birthday just before Hallowe’en, a make your own costume party was the perfect choice for my daughter’s 10th birthday.  The idea was that the kids would make a costume and take it home to use for Hallowe’en.

Materials to Collect

We collected materials from thrift stores, dollar stores and our local buy nothing group to inspire their imagination. Shopping was part of the fun. We chose items costing under $10, that could be customised to make a costume of their own design.

 

drapes and sheets $3.99 each from Goodwill were perfect for creating dresses and cloaks
A selection of ready made costumes to use as a base. All under $10 from thrift stores
The flower clips were $2.99 for a bag from Goodwill, the beads came as a set from Dollar Tree and the rest was either donated or from thrift stores.

Suggested Items

  • Drapes, sheets and lengths of material
  • Tulle
  • Feather boas
  • Headbands and hats
  • Glasses, gloves, masks and jewellery
  • Plain shirts, leggings or shorts.
  • Any low-cost ready made costumes to customise
  • ribbons and bows
  • elastic
  • Velcro

Inspiration from Goodwill costume experts

Earlier that week I had attended a Goodwill Hallowe’en event and was able to use the advice of their costume experts as inspiration. Did you know that every Goodwill store has a costume expert?  (I didn’t). This is really useful to know, since I only ever buy costumes in thrift stores, putting together a costume is part of the fun but sometimes a bit of guidance would be helpful.

The costume experts helped us create a costume. I found a princess dress that I could also use for an 80’s prom night I’m going to with friends and at only $9.99 it was a bargain. Some of the costume ideas were really creative, I especially love the Mad Hatter ( I think the black tulle skirt she wore made it to our party and was used to form part of a sea monster costume).Goodwill costumes

For me these costumes look so much better than an expensive, ready put together one. Goodwill collect up items for their Hallowe’en costumes all year round, to put on display in October, so you will find all kinds of interesting goodies to make a unique and creative costume. There is even a dedicated Halloween Store in Tacoma. Halloween, generates the largest seasonal funding for Goodwill’s mission to provide career, job training and services to the unemployed. By shopping at Goodwill you’ll save yourself money, come home with a unique costume and support local people into employment. 

 

Design and Make Hats

The party started by designing hats made from paper grocery bags. Paper grocery bags are the perfect size to fit an average sized head.  Most of the materials came from donations, the dollar store or thrift stores.

Materials 

  • Paper grocery bags
  • Tissue paper
  • Glue and hot glue gun for bigger items
  • Ribbon
  • Fake flowers and leaves
  • Stickers and sequins
  • Tulle
  • Jewels
  • Pom-poms

making hats from paper grocery bags

How to Make a Hat

  1. Remove the handles
  2. Roll the sides of the bag from the open end.
  3. Push in the corners to make an interesting shape.
  4. Decorate with coloured paper
  5. Add decorations to create a unique hat.

The hats were judged at the end of the party and prizes awarded for the best design.

 

Make a Costume

To make the costume making challenging and fun, we chose categories. The children picked a category from a hat and set to work making a costume to fit their category. The most imaginative costume would win a prize. The categories were

  • animals
  • mythical creatures
  • magic
  • under the sea
  • monsters
  • be wild
  • make me laugh
  • a world of colour
  • book characters
  • heroes and villains

They could use any of the materials provided including elastic, velcro or ribbon to fasten things together.

items for make your own costume party

They all had really clear ideas of what they wanted to be and when they couldn’t find what they needed, improvised with what was available.  Rolls of coloured tulle came in useful as they used it to wrap their legs or arms. For a Winnie the Pooh costume, a yellow shirt was used to cover part of her legs and the rest were wrapped with yellow tulle. She added some ears and a honey pot made from paper.

 

tulle was used to give the impression of ripped clothes
Clown (make me laugh), Unicorn (mythical beasts), colourful costume (world of colour) and Rapunzel (book characters)
A sea monster

 

Dressing up and creating their own costumes was such fun. I think it would be a good group task too. You could allocate each group a category and they could dress one person in the group. They all got to take their costumes home at the end of the party.

The creations were judged on how well they had interpreted their category and how imaginative the costume was.  We had a bat, a sea monster, a werewolf, a zombie pirate, a unicorn, Rapunzel, a fairy, Winnie the Pooh and a flash of colour.

If you want more inspiration for making your own costumes, check out these great resources from goodwill.

Costume Look Book

Video Tutorials

Pinterest Costume Ideas

 

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books, competition, early education & play, education, imagination, literacy, outdoor play, parenting, parents, play, review, teaching

The Queen is Coming to Tea: Book review & fun activities for a Royal tea party theme.

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9781492607571-PR

Disclaimer: Links to the book title are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you purchase the book from my recommendation I will receive a small financial incentive.

The Queen is Coming to Tea by Linda Ravin Lodding, is a sweet book that children who love to play at tea parties will adore.  My girls love to grab a blanket, turning it into a  royal cloak and lay out all their cuddly friends for tea parties. As such, they loved this story about a little girl travelling around the world to gather essential items for the Queen’s tea.
Ellie finds out the Queen is coming to tea and with her best friend, Langley the Elephant,  travels to Paris, China, Italy, and New York to make sure they have everything they need for tea with the Queen. But will the Queen patiently wait? And what exactly will be waiting for the Queen?

Queen_pg8-9
I love the bright colourful illustrations by Constance Von Kitzing, but they may be a little too pink for some boys to enjoy.  The illustration of Ellie’s playroom gives clues as to where Ellie’s ideas about gathering items from around the world came from. I liked this insight into the child’s imagination.
The Queen is Coming to Tea would be a great book to read aloud and inspire play and learning.
You could..

  1. Prepare tea and cakes for the Queen using play dough or clay or outside in a mud kitchen.
  2. Bake cakes, or traditional British teatime treats like scones, biscuits and cucumber sandwiches and prepare a tea party or picnic.
  3. Watch footage of real royal events like the Queen’s coronation or a royal wedding and plan your own pretend street party. You could make flags and bunting, make posters or invitations, play games or have races and dance to music.
  4. Taste or smell different types of tea. Which country do they come from? Which is your favourite? How do the leaves turn into a drink? investigate with loose leaf tea, tea bags, warm water and tea strainers.
  5. Make a graph or tally chart of the children’s favourite types of tea.
  6. Could you make tea from herbs or leaves you find in your garden? These could be real or pretend.
  7. Give the children tulle, paper and plastic bags and scraps of material. Can they design an outfit fit for tea with the Queen.
  8. Are there any people from your community who have been invited to tea with the Queen? Perhaps recipients of MBE’s or OBE’s. Invite them to come and talk to the children.
  9. Further investigate some of the places featured in the story – perhaps some of the children have visited them.
  10. Practice squeezing lemons or perhaps try this fruit tea recipe
    Peach Mango White Iced Tea RecipeIngredients:
    4 Cups Water
    3 White Tea Bags
    1 Peach
    ½ Cup Chopped Frozen Mango
    1 tbsp sugar plus Sugar to TasteInstructions:
    Boil the 6 cups of water; remove from heat
    Steep the tea bags about 5 minutes; remove bags and allow tea to cool to room temperature
    Add chopped peaches and mango to a mixing bowl and mix with sugar; let fruit soften
    Place fruit in pitcher and pour cooled tea on top; add sugar to taste and stir

Queen_pg24-25

Giveaway

For a chance to win a copy of The Queen is Coming to Tea and a porcelain tea set enter the giveaway below. The closing date is August 6 2017.

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childhood, parenting, parents, party bags, Uncategorized

Children’s Parties – No More Party Bags Please

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Party season has arrived again in our household.  My eldest has just had her 7th birthday and most of her class are spring and summer born babies so we now have an endless run.   In her book bag today I found 3 thank you cards, some written by the child and some by the parents.  What will I do with them?  Look at who they are from and put them straight in the bin. To the mums who spent hours writing them or the poor children who have been made to sit for hours signing their name, I am sorry.  Though I agree that it is right that children should be grateful for what they are given, when they go to so many parties is it really necessary that we get a thank you card from every one?  I’m probably known as the ungrateful or disorganised mum because I don’t send them.  At the weekend we visited friends and my daughter decided she wanted to write a thank you card for them, this one was written because she decided it was a thoughtful thing to do rather than because I had told her to do so – surely that means far more.

Women’s Hour today discussed  children’s parties and most of the views expressed were either that they were a huge headache both financially and in terms of organisation, or that they were a thing that the parents relished organising.   I have a friend in the latter category, who will throw a party at the drop of a hat, hand making everything to fit the theme including party clothes and food.  A part of me would like to be like that but time and inclination hold me back.  Besides which,  I’m sure my children would be just as happy with a trip somewhere nice and a shop bought cake.  We have tried various things from overcrowded parties in the house, hiring a big hall, not having a party but taking a few children to the theatre and this year an ice skating party. My 2 year old is yet to have a party as she doesn’t really have enough friends to justify one .  Parties in the house are far too stressful for me, the combination of noise, overcrowding, mess and organising food is a nightmare.  The big hall party was fine on the day (a joint party with 30 children) but organising what I was going to do with them, sorting food and all the things we needed to entertain them took a lot of time and energy.  The last 2 were relatively easy.  Ice skating with a group of  7 year olds was surprisingly stress free.  The children had a lesson and then were given penguins to hold to help them balance if they needed them.  There were plenty of adults around to help out so that even the 2 year olds had a turn.  The food was prepared by the venue and all I needed to provide was the cake. Party bags included a free ticket to come back and ice skate – so much better than the usual tat (though some of that was still there).

Why do we feel the need to provide party bags at children’s parties?  We all hate the little bits that come out of them that usually end up scattered around the house.  Some people  substitute the bags with presents but all children somehow expect to come home from a party with a present  these days. When we were kids this was never contemplated, if we were lucky we came home with a prize from a game.  Even pass the parcel now has a present in every layer – I remember the days when each layer had a forfeit rather than a prize.  My children so don’t need anymore stuff.  Call me a humbug, but I’m not going to do it anymore and hopefully lots of like minded mums will join in the boycott.