Ballet, Dance

Age of Birthday Girl: 8 years old
Age Range of Guests: 5-10 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 3-12 years, depending on specific focus & activities

When our middle child turned 8 she was taking dance class and wanted a ballet birthday party.  (Who knew at the time that this recreational dance class would turn into the hours and hours of dance it is today?!)

Invitations: We cut ballet slipper shapes out of pink card stock and glued them onto white card stock.  A pink bow was added to the front with "You're invited... (A little bit like this...).  Party details were printed on the back.

 Cake:  We used a 9x13 cake pan and then created a template out of wax paper and carved ballet slipper shapes out of the cake. These were then covered with pink frosting with white in the middle for the inside of the shoes.  Pearlized candy was added around the edge of the white area with a small frosting bow on the toe.  Real pink ribbon was added to turn them into pointe shoes. We were greatly inspired by this tutorial.

Activities: The party guests each decorated crowns found at Oriental Trading Company using stickers, jewels, ribbon, and markers.

The kids also had the chance to take strips of ribbon and tulle to create a simple tutu by tying the strips onto a main waistband piece of ribbon.  Most guests didn't finish at the party and took strips of cloth home with them to finish it up there.

 They all got a brief ballet lesson, led by Dad of course - what a good sport! - and then we played a version of musical chairs where the kids had to dance around the basement and when the music stopped they went to a photo of a ballerina in a certain pose.  They had to copy the pose as they stood next to it.

Then, in two teams, they created poses with props and costumes. The other team got to look at it briefly and then the original team would change something.  The other team had to figure out what had been changed.

Another variety of this game would be to have one team create a pose and the second team looks at it briefly. Then that second team has to recreate it themselves.

Goodie bags: Pink and blue goodie bags were filled with candy treats, ballet/dance stickers, ballet pencils and notepads, hair scrunchies, and bracelets.

Tinkerbell, Fairy Party

Age of Birthday Girl: 5 years old
Age Range of Guests: 3-9 years old
Gender of Guests: boys and girls

Potential Age Range of Theme: 2-10 years, depending on specific focus & activities

Invitations: We didn't get very creative with these this year and just bought some Tinkerbell Invitations from the party store.  (Doesn't happen often since part of the fun for the kids is to make their own invitations but this year just didn't come together in time).  The envelopes had related fairy stickers.

Cake:  The cake this year was fun and easy to make.  It was a regular round double layer cake covered in green frosting.  Blue frosting was used to create a small pond with flower sprinkles to act as lily pads.  We found a Tinkerbell cake topper which we placed next to the pond along with some candy flowers.  For a nice finishing touch we placed fake flowers around the base of the cake.

Activities: Fairy themed games were the theme of the day.  We had the kids do a relay race to place fairy flowers along the path.  One child placed a flower then the next would pick one up and run across the flowers that were already placed to put another one down.  They would then run back along the flower path to tag the next person in line and so on.  Once all the flowers were placed the entire team had to run across the flower path one at a time.  Meanwhile there were parents who were blowing bubbles along the path, just for fun!

We took the kids outside for a scavenger hunt of fairy items and locations.  They had to collect items to later create a fairy house.  We also provided fake flowers from the bunch we had used to decorate the cake.  Somehow we managed to not have any photos of the finished products (??!!) but the kids had great fun.  We had also placed hidden fairy messages in our garden which the kids had to find and decode - messages about where to find fairies and how to create great places for them to live.

Goodie bags: Green paper bags filled with Tinker-bell items such as pencils, stickers, notebooks, and jewelry.  We included some candy and chocolate as well.