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…IT'S EASY AS 1, 2, 3
In honor of the start of the school year, throw
your September-birthday boy or girl a party
with a fun alphabet theme. Alphabet and initial
themes make for a unique birthday party and are
often the choice du jour for first-birthday celebrations. As long as you have some older children attending, up to 4 years of age, the party detailed below is sure to be fun for all.
INVITATIONS
Cut out the initials of the birthday child and either make the cutout be the invitation and provide all the details on the letter, or place the letter onto white card stock and inside provide all the party details.
Use alphabet stamps to decorate the front of the invitation, perhaps spelling out the birthday child’s name.
If you are throwing a first-birthday party, take a picture of your child playing among alphabet blocks and put this on the front of the invitation.
On the invitation, ask your guests to wear bold, bright colors to the party.
DECORATIONS
Pick several primary colors as the color scheme of the party and go to town. Purchase helium balloons in these colors and have them all around the party room. Spell out the name of the birthday child and the party guests on the balloons. If you don’t have enough balloons, you can use initials only. You can also give the balloons away to the kids at the end of the party to take home.
For a table centerpiece, look for big wooden ABC blocks and attach a few balloons to each one.
Cut out the letters of the alphabet and post them all over the party room. Teacher resource stores will also have the alphabet letters already premade and you will just have to cut them out.
Spell out alphabet signs to greet the guests when they arrive—for example: “Elizabeth is Two! Hurray!”
CRAFTS
Provide alphabet letters, markers, stickers, glue and other embellishments and set up a letter-decorating station. The kids (and adults) can decorate their initials or their names.
Provide children with a white T-shirt with an iron-on alphabet letter for their initial. You can iron on the initial beforehand or give them the letter to deal with at home. On the back of the shirt, the kids can make handprint designs with nontoxic, wearable/machine-washable paint.
Use wood block ABCs as stamps, and have the kids make art creations with them. They could also make birthday cards for the birthday child with these same stamps.
Have the kids make ID bracelets using alphabet beads.
PARTY ACTIVITIES
Hire a face painter to paint letters on the kids’ faces, and/or paint their names.
Hold a book exchange. Ask your guests to bring a favorite book of theirs to give to another party guest. Have the kids sit in a circle and play music, and let the kids pass their books around the circle. When the music stops, the book that each child is holding is the book he/she keeps. You could do this several times before stopping.
Play charades, and have each child act out a word that starts with a letter of the alphabet. So, if it is “B,” it could be for a bear, and the child can act out a bear and the other kids will have to figure out what he is.
Make little alphabet letters and stick them all over the house on things that begin with that letter, i.e., “G” is for glass, so stick a “G” on glass, and have the kids find all the letters and shout out the letter and what it stands for.
MENU
Serve any type of sandwich you like and cut them out with alphabet shapes.
Serve alphabet cereal, little goldfish crackers, carrots and fruit as additional snacks.
Serve gelatin cut out in alphabet shapes in a variety of flavors.
Bake sugar cookies and cut them out in different alphabet letters. You can ice them yourself, put them into clear cellophane bags, and tie with a pretty ribbon as a goody item or have the kids decorate the cookies and enjoy eating them right at the party as another activity.
Serve Oreos on a Stick: Place a Popsicle stick into an Oreo cookie, and dip the cookie into melted chocolate. Let it dry and then use an icing tube to write different letters on each one. This treat can also be a take-home goody; just wrap it in cellophane with a ribbon and add to the goody bag.
Make regular cupcakes and top them off with the letters of the alphabet on the frosting that spell the birthday child's name.
GOODY BAGS
Find out each child’s name before the party, and decorate a brown paper bag using their initials. You can do this with markers and/or stickers. Inside the bag, include alphabet stickers, iron-on patches with their initials, alphabet coloring books with a small box of crayons, magnetic letters, a wooden block with their initials, etc.
Lisa Kothari is the founder and president of Peppers and Pollywogs (www.peppersandpollywogs.com), a kids’ party-planning company that provides parents with ideas, entertainers and interesting web-based tools (customized rhymes and cards for your invitations!) to make kids’ party planning easy. She has recently written and published Dear Peppers and Pollywogs… What Parents Want to Know About Planning Their Kids’ Parties, which is available at www.amazon.com and www.peppersandpollywogs.com. |
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