A few days ago my 4 year old daughter finally convinced me to let her have a Valentine's Day party. So we now have 1 week to plan the party - games, crafts, and food. To keep the party planning expenses down, I limited the guest list to 11 kids and opted for an afternoon party so we don't have to provide a meal.
Now we are in the midst of planning crafts and games. I have found that my four year old has a great imagination when it comes to games. For her winter themed birthday party, she came up with pin the nose on the snowman. Likewise she is planning games for this party.
Crafts:
Heart Necklaces: At JoAnn Fabric I found red heart beads (65 for $0.99). I bought those and a large bag of white beads (720 for 3.99) for the kids to make necklaces. I also bought 10 yards of plastic glitter Craft Lace ($0.79). I figure we will not use all of the white beads or the lacing and they can be saved for future crafts. Next time, I am going to plan the party in advance to wait for a sale.
Bag Decorating: We are going to decorate bags for goodies and Valentine's. I have foam stickers which I bought at Michael's for our play group party and should have some left. I bought a large box of 1000 stickers for $1.99 at Party City. My daughter also has heart and flower stamps, markers, and crayons. I am hoping to find white lunch bags to decorate or we will just decorate the brown ones. The only white ones I have found so far are the coated bags which will not be as easy to stamp or draw on.
Cookie or Cupcake Decorating: We are going to decorate either cookies or cupcakes which the kids can take home or eat at the party. I will dye icing in red and pink (and leave some white). I will probably dye coconut. We have flavored mini-marshmallows in various colors and chocolate chips. I would like to have M&Ms but may not because two children have peanut allergies.
Games:
With preschoolers, I prefer to have games where everyone is a winner or we just do it for fun. That way everyone gets a prize.
Pencil Drop: This was a staple in my house growing up. My parents had this plastic milk jug that they bought me for my 2nd Christmas when I was 13 mos old. It had the perfect size opening for dropping pencils in (about 2" in diameter) and the neck kept them from popping out. The kids then get to keep the pencil. I was probably 18 and it was still being used for my little sister's parties. The great thing is that as the kids get older (& taller) it gets harder because they are dropping it further. Unfortunately, the plastic jug is no longer around. For Halloween, I used a larger container that I had and made a pipe cleaner spiderweb to make it a little harder (and a washcloth to make the bottom less bouncy). Still thinking of a good way to do this for Valentine's Day.
Pin the Hearts on the Bear: My daughter has a pink stuffed bear with hearts on its tummy. She wants to do pin the hearts on the bear. I am thinking of making a pink bear out of poster board and cutting out hearts for the kids to pin on. Unfortunately, I am not super artistic, so hopefully I can make the bear look halfway decent.
Kissing Booth: (No, not that kind) My daughter has a market that we turned into a haunted house toss for Halloween and she wants to do something with it. I think we will cut out lip shaped disks and have the kids toss them through a decorated market. I bought a bag of Hershey Kisses to use as prizes.
Valentine's Hullabaloo: I need one active game for the kids. This is based on the Hullabaloo game from Cranium. The game has pads in different shapes and colors with pictures on them. Then it tells the kids to go to a different color, shape, or picture theme until finally declaring whoever is on a particular pad the winner. We are designing our own Valentine's themed game. We are going to use red, pink, white, and purple paper to make the pads and cover them in contact paper for durability. We will use a heart as one of the shapes. I have found Valentine's ClipArt that we are going to print on the different pads. I am using food (Hershey Kiss, Heart Lollipops, Box of Chocolates, etc), Characters, and one other still to be determined category. I am debating the calling mechanism. I think I'll just record myself saying different options and randomize it on my iPod. ("Hop to a Heart", "Twirl to a Red", "Grab some food") I will include some that say at the end "ie Hop to a Heart......Freeze. Whoever is on XXX is the winner" where XXX is one of the pictures on a heart. My other option is to make a deck of cards some of which list winners and others which don't. If I am really ambitious, maybe I'll polish up my old programming skills and write a program to do this. (You probably need to know how to play Hullabaloo for this to make sense).
Bucket Toss: I may have the kids toss a small stuffed heart into a bucket for a prize.
Well, I think that is plenty to have the kids entertained for two hours.
