Parenting Toddlers
Complete (boyish) Party Themes
Firefighter Party
Considering the number of four- and five-year-olds who say they're going to be firefighters when they grow up, it's a wonder the world isn't teeming with these brave rubber-coated souls. Those flashing lights, those nifty hook and ladders, those cute dalmatians�no wonder it's the career of choice for preschoolers. Give this party a try, and word of your creativity might just spread like, well, you know what.
THE HIT OF THE PARTY:
The centerpiece of the fireman's party was a huge cardboard fire truck. Cut a refrigerator box into a pickup-truck shape, then decorated it with everything from cardboard signs to pie-plate headlights. Give each member of the crew a plastic firefighter's hat, and they'll spend the next few hours cooking up adventures in the old pumper.
FUN & GAMES:
For very young kids, the cardboard truck will probably be enough, but older ones may also enjoy a few structured games.
�Set up a firefighter's rescue challenge. The guests put on a fire hat, slip down a slide, and drive a toy car across the yard to the playhouse, which erupts in yellow tagboard flames. After picking up a length of garden hose and pretending to douse the fire, contestants run to a rope ladder, rescue a stuffed animal that is clothespinned to a tree, and drive the toy car back to the start to receive a prize.
�Arrange for a tour of your local fire station.
FAVORS:
Plastic firefighter hats and a short length of old garden hose make a terrific take-home dress-up set. Or, you can create a little goody bag, complete with a computer-generated fire-chief certificate, a Matchbox fire engine and fireball candies.
EATS:
Anything that's red (such as tomato soup) or has some gentle heat (salsa and chips) works for this theme. And, for the centerpiece de resistance, call in a hook-and-ladder cake, complete with gumdrop lights, cookie wheels and a pretzel stick ladder. Like all fire trucks, it'll go fast.
Fire Engine Cake
1 baked 13-by-9-by-2-inch cake
6 cups red frosting
1 cup gray frosting
Cake Decorations:
Red M&M's, chocolate sandwich cookies, pretzel rods and sticks, yellow gumdrops, black jelly bean, white Chiclets, mini jawbreakers, black shoestring and twist licorice
Freeze the cake for two to three hours, then cut into four pieces (A, B, C and D). Slice B in half horizontally to create E. Stack A onto D for the engine bed, B onto C for the cab, and E onto D for the control panel. Frost the bed and cab red and the controls gray. With a dab of frosting, place an M&M in the center of each cookie to make the wheels, then press onto the engine. Add a pretzel ladder, gumdrop emergency lights, jelly bean horn, Chiclet headlights and jawbreaker controls. Use licorice to make a hose and outline the windows of the cab.
Painting Party
THE HIT OF THE PARTY:
At Jill Driscoll's party for her son, Christopher, the guests especially got into mural painting. "As soon as I said, "Go for it,'" says Jill, "I knew it was going to be a hit." Instead of using butcher paper, Jill went to her local newspaper for end-roll paper (long rolls of paper that many newspapers give away for free or just a few dollars) and stapled it to a fence outdoors.
FUN & GAMES:
Remind guests to dress in old clothes and give them large tube socks to roll up over their sneakers.
~ Make artist's hats. Buy some inexpensive painter's caps, which arriving guests can decorate with fabric paint.
~ Chalk the walk. At Edith Gholson's party for four-year-old Meg, guests were each assigned a square of the front walk to decorate with chalk.
~ Paint with water. Little kids don't even need paint to keep them happy. Hand each one a brush and a bucket of water and have them paint your fence or deck.
FAVORS:
Fill a paper paint bucket with a paintbrush, balloons, a recipe for homemade play dough, and a coloring book.
EATS:
Even lunch had an artistic flair at the Gholsons': The kids painted ketchup on corn dogs with basting brushes. But the real masterpiece was the sheet cake, which Edith brought out frosted white. She told the kids she was too busy to decorate it, so they had to. Naturally, the finished art looked good enough to eat.
LEGO Party
Sure, we parents may think of LEGOs as those things that live under the couch cushions or turn up (ouch!) unexpectedly on the carpet. But what if, for a special day, all those little squares were supposed to be underfoot? That was the idea reader and LEGO-maniac Katie Lemberg had when, at age nine, she and her mom created a LEGO party.
THE HIT OF THE PARTY:
Katie's mom baked a sheet cake, set eight cupcakes on top (held in place with toothpicks), and frosted it a bright color to look like a giant LEGO piece. "It was great," Katie recalls. "None of the adults knew what it was �and all of the kids did."
DECOR:
Streamers in bright primary colors and heaps and heaps of LEGOs.
FUN & GAMES:
In addition to just building with the bricks, Katie came up with a few other LEGO-inspired games.
~ Build a tower. Katie's dad dumped a bunch of LEGOs on the floor, then timed guests to see who could build the tallest structure in two minutes.
~ Guess how many LEGOs are in a jar.
~ Pin the LEGO on the...LEGO. Create a landscape with an integral piece missing, such as a boat's deep-sea diver or a castle's flag, and, with eyes closed, kids must take turns trying to place it in the right spot.
FAVORS:
A small LEGO set and LEGO-shaped candies (available at some specialty candy stores).
Cowboy Hoedown
Rumor has it that in Texas a man is measured by the size of his hat, the strength of his herd and the success of his birthday bash.
THE HIT OF THE PARTY:
Watch out�in cowboy country, you can't turn your horse in a circle without running across a rattlesnake. In Sidewinder Jump�a game the kids all loved�guests have to avoid the "bite" of a deadly rattler. Make your snake out of an 8-foot length of rope. At one end, glue a piece of thick cardboard cut and painted to resemble a rattlesnake's diamond-patterned head. On the other end, create a rattle by filling a few film canisters with a teaspoon of dried beans or rice. Punch a hole in the top of each canister and poke a pipe cleaner through, balling up the end beneath the cap to keep it from slipping out. Glue or tape the canister shut. To play, have adults or kids hold each end of the rattlesnake rope and whisk it back and forth along the ground. Children try to jump over the wriggling snake without touching it. For older kids, try raising the rope a few inches off the ground.
DECOR:
No self-respecting cowpoke is gonna come within a mile of fancy crepe paper, so instead Carrie decorated with ropes, bandannas and pictures of guests made into "Wanted" posters.
FUN & GAMES:
~ Dude 'em up. As guests arrive, present each one with a plastic cowboy hat, a bandanna and a grocery-bag vest. To make one, cut up the center front of the bag, then round out the neck hole and cut circles for armholes. Kids can tear a fringe along the bottom, glue on a foil sheriff's badge or add other decorations.
~ Go hunt in the hay. In a small pile of hay, hide pennies or little toys, which kids must feel around for with their eyes shut.
~ Lasso practice. Using a hula hoop and a child's wooden rocking horse, have cowboys try to "rope" the mustang's neck.
~ Shoot-out at the Better-than-OK Corral. Spread small, inexpensive plastic bugs on the sidewalk and have kids shoot at the varmints with squirt guns. Anyone who moves a bug with the stream of water gets to keep it. Or, cut out silhouettes of animals from tissue paper, affix them to the side of the house and let each kid shoot one. The first kid to put a hole through her target wins.
FAVORS:
In addition to the cowboy hat, squirt gun and bandanna, each cowpoke can take home a toy harmonica or bag of trail mix.
EATS:
The chow wagon can serve up pie tins filled with franks and (jelly) beans, and glasses of sarsaparilla�root beer�to wash down the trail dust. For a special cake, try one shaped like a cowboy's best friend: his horse.
Horse Cake
1 Baked 13-By-9-By-2-Inch Cake
3 Cups Chocolate Frosting
1 Cup White Frosting
Cake Decorations: Black shoestring licorice, Life Savers candies, Necco wafer, mini jawbreaker, black jelly bean, marzipan carrot
Freeze the cake for 2 to 3 hours, then cut and arrange as shown. Frost the cake brown, adding a white frosting mane. Braid the licorice for the bridle and reins and connect them with Life Savers candies. Coil black licorice for the eye and top it with a Necco wafer and a mini jawbreaker. Give the horse a jelly-bean nose to sniff his marzipan carrot treat.
Pirate Party
Since young children have a natural inclination to pillage and plunder, pirate parties are always in fashion. Readers Connie and Tony Bonaccio told us that they were hooked by the flexibility of this theme and all the swashbuckling fun, which made their son Ben's fourth birthday party a blast. It was such a hit that they threw the same party for their younger son Nick when he turned four.
THE HIT OF THE PARTY:
Let's face it: The reason pirating was once such a popular career choice was because of the loot, so a treasure hunt is a sure bet. Hand the captain (the birthday child) a map, covered with decades of dust (a pinch of flour). Inside, write a message about a stash of treasure hidden somewhere in your yard or house. For example: "As any pirate ought to know, this is where tomatoes grow." Each guest gets to guess the answer to a riddle, and as a pack, the guests can run to wherever the clue leads and find another one. At the Bonaccios' party, Connie came up with a great variation for young kids. She used Polaroid picture clues instead of written ones. At hunt's end, be sure to hide a suitable prize, such as a stash of candy coins.
FUN & GAMES:
Organize the rest of your party around two principles: that pirates are an energetic lot, and that they like to take home lots of booty.
~ Walk the plank. The Bonaccios secured a board across a Little Tykes pool with duct tape. They set toy alligators in the pool for ambience, then each child got to walk across. Upon reaching the other side, the pirate was awarded a Hook Hand. To make one, cut a slit in the bottom of a plastic cup. Cut a hook shape out of cardboard, wrap with foil, and slip it through the slit in the cup.
~ Make spyglasses. Have kids cover the end of a toilet-paper tube with a square of colored cellophane and fix it in place with a rubber band.
~ Tick tock, find the croc. With a little imagination, an egg timer makes a suitable crocodile. Have pirates try to locate the hidden croc by its tick, before the bell rings.
~ Musical islands. Set as many hula hoops on the floor as you have guests, and play music. Pirates must walk around the hoops until you turn off the tunes, at which point they must be standing inside one of the "islands" or they're out. Every few minutes, take away a hoop, until only one seafarer remains.
FAVORS:
Your pirates can leave with quite a haul, such as gummy fish, temporary tattoos or candy necklaces.
EATS:
Spear a wooden skewer through a small piece of paper to make a schooner sail and set it in the middle of a hot dog. Add a few Goldfish crackers and the fearsome pirate cake below.
Pirate Cake
1 baked 9-inch round cake
2 1/2 cups white frosting
1 1/2 cups red frosting
Cake Decorations: Marshmallow, fruit leather, M&M, peppermint patty, black shoestring licorice, mini jawbreakers
Freeze the cake for 2 to 3 hours, then cut and arrange as shown. Frost the pirate's face white. Add a marshmallow nose and an eye and mouth cut from fruit leather. Use M&M for an eyeball. Tie on a peppermint patty eye patch with shoestring licorice straps. Give the pirate a stubbly beard, hairdo and eyebrows made of shoestring licorice. Frost the bandanna red and decorate with mini jawbreakers.