Making Birthdays Fun
Anyone can become an expert party planner in time for a child’s
birthday party. These simple activities can turn a party from bland to
fabulous. Plus, most of these ideas are so easy that you can even get
kids involved with helping prepare for the party.
Custom Candy Bars – This craft can either be done before the
party for use as a favor, or during the party as a fun activity. First,
choose a type of medium-sized candy bar to use. Carefully, remove the
wrapper and lay it flat on a piece of construction paper. Trace the
outline of the wrapper as a rectangle on the paper. This will be your
template for your custom bars. Cut out as many copies of this shape as
you need. Then, let the birthday child, or party guests, decorate these
new “wrappers.” When they are done, you can easily tape the wrappers
around the prepackaged bars.
Edible Centerpiece – You can make some great edible
centerpieces depending on the theme of your party. For example, an
animal themed party could benefit from a centerpiece of a wildlife
kingdom. You can use animal crackers for the animals and pretzels for
trees. Similarly, for a princess party you could make a castle out of
graham crackers and decorative candies. To hold your centerpiece
together, use some thick cake icing. This works great as a type of
edible glue. You can also get the birthday child involved in making his
or her own centerpiece. Kids love this type of activity, which is
similar to making gingerbread houses during the holidays.
Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes – This is a great birthday treat idea
for kids who love both cake and ice cream. It involves baking cupcakes
inside of small ice cream cones. To prepare these treats, start with any
type of regular cake or cupcake batter. Then, spoon batter into
flat-bottomed ice cream cones. Each cone should be filled three-quarters
of the way up. This will leave room for the batter to rise. To bake
filled cones, place each one face up in a muffin tin. Bake the cupcake
cones for fifteen to twenty minutes at 350 degrees or until a toothpick
inserted into the cakes comes out clean. Once the finished cones have
cooled, you can decorate them to look more like ice cream. Some great
options for this include using whipped cream, sprinkles, and cherries.
You can even let kids decorate these treats themselves.
Themed Mini Sandwiches – Need to feed a lot of little mouths
for a lunchtime party? Consider making cute finger sandwiches in
different shapes. First, choose a simple cookie cutter in the shape you
want your sandwiches to be. Then, use the cookie cutters to cut shapes
out of thick, soft slices of bread. Once you have your shapes, you can
prepare sandwiches with any fillings you like. Peanut butter and jelly
is always a popular option, but you can experiment with other ideas as
well. If you want to use lunch meat, you can use the same cookie cutter
to cut the meat slices. This will make them fit perfectly on your cute,
kid-friendly sandwiches.
Fruity Place cards – For a healthy treat, you can prepare
these custom fruit place cards. These will tell party guests where to
sit, and give the kids something sweet to munch on. First, choose two or
three kinds of fruit that can be easily cut into cubes. Your best bets
are cantaloupe or honeydew melon. However, you can also use whole
strawberries or fresh (not canned) pineapple. Cut fruit into cubes,
unless you are using strawberries. Then, arrange fruit on plates with
one piece per letter in a child’s name. Stick piece with a toothpick in
each fruit piece. Then, attach a letter to each toothpick (you can write
them on squares of cardstock) to spell out each guest’s name. |
