Yesterday, my daughter had a Valentine's Day party with 10 friends. As usual, her toys proved to be a big hit among the kids with some selecting to just play with her toys instead of participating in the games.
I started the party by having each child decorate a bag with stickers, stamps, and markers. This gave them an activity to do as everyone arrived and also gave them a place to store any prizes they won in the games.
The first game we had was a treasure hunt. I hid a box of ring pops in the oven of my daughter's play kitchen. I had glued clues to red hearts that took them from one place to another across the basement. Sending them to generic items (table, pillow, oven, easel) worked much better than a specific toy (Handy Manny workbench or Tigger & Pooh Changing Tree) as not all kids were familiar with the characters. We played as a group with the kids all looking for the clue together. As they found each clue, I gave out a small prize to each child (eraser, pencil, bracelet, stickers, etc). They all received a ring pop when they found the "treasure".
Another successful game, was my Valentine's version of Hullabaloo. We had 26 pads with a mix of red, white, purple, and pink in circles, diamonds, and hearts with dessert, Valentine Pooh characters, and Princesses. There were 8-9 pads in each category to allow for many players. I wrote an AppleScript program to call the moves using a random number generator and the built-in text to speech converter. Unfortunately the volume on my laptop was not sufficient and I ended up having to re-announce the calls. For the pads, I printed the pictures on white paper and glued them to heavy paper for the red and purple. At the last minute, I realized I did not have pink paper, so we colored the white background pink. For the white and pink, we covered them front and back with contact paper to make them more durable. I will definitely keep this game in mind to adapt for future party themes.
The kids loved decorating their own cupcakes. I served each child a cupcake on a plate and then we gave them a blob of icing in their choice of color (red, white, or pink) and various toppings (marshmallows, Hershey Kiss, chocolate chips, sprinkles, etc) on their plates. Next time, I think I would make the plates ahead of time with a variety of toppings or at least the icing.
Pin the heart on the bear was successful as well with most children choosing to participate. I was afraid we were not going to be able to do this since I had forgotten to purchase poster board. But, I had 2 sheets of brown 12x20" construction paper that I was able to use to make a decent bear. I used red construction paper to make the hearts.
We had toss the bear into the bucket and drop the pencil into the popcorn box. A few children played these games, but most were too busy playing.
I also had necklaces for them to make. A few children made the necklaces - ranging from 3 beads to a fully beaded necklace. I had bought glittery plastic lacing so they still looked pretty even with only a few beads.
The kids also had a great time playing with balloons and bouncing them around. I found that the shower stall in my basement is a great place to stash the balloons until it is time to play with them.
