3747

Bob the Builder -3yr- Dress the Builder Relay

April 2002

Jesse in Pittsburgh, PA USA

Special Mention

For my son's third birthday, we had a Bob the Builder party.  The invitations were store bought "bob" invitations.

The decorating was done on the inside and outside of the house.  We had orange pylons (construction cones) lining our sidewalk to our house with  yellow "CAUTION" tape attached to the cones and connecting them to outline the sidewalk. ON the porch I had a small table with two Tonka dump trucks with balloons tied to them.  A yellow construction sign on the door said "Caution party zone ahead".  A little unexpected decorating was done by my husband when the front door mechanism broke after the first guests arrived.  He fixed it (in his jeans and orange T-shirt and nail apron on) and was greeting guests simultaneously ( it looked staged!!) and then he left the tool box on the porch as an added feature. 

Once inside the house, there was another construction  sign that said "party hat required".  Every child received a yellow construction hat (Bob the Builder, pack of 4 for $2.25) and a nail belt for Home Depot or Ace Hardware and two plastic tools (with their names on them) to put in the apron.  How adorable they all looked.  My son had his Bob the Builder overall shorts on with an attached tool belt and the yellow and orange plaid shirt just like the one Bob wears (Sears sold these for 26.99.) My daughter wore jeans, a green shirt and red ponytail holder and tool belt like Wendy.  I wore overalls and a white shirt and construction hard hat.  The guests were in the mood as well, many wore denim and orange shirts.  In the kitchen, a larger Tonka dump truck held the plates, silverware and napkins.  The dollar store in our area had construction plates and napkins.

The cake was decorated with Bob and Wendy and mounds of dirt and green icing. it had large speckled jelly beans for rocks. There was a bob the builder figurine that held one candle (store bought) and then construction vehicle candles (Wilton) to supplement the Bob candle. The cake was from Bethel Bakery. 

I served chips and salsa in a clean unsused paint roller tray.  I had found gift bags in the shape of construction vehicles and they were about 7 inches high. I used these for chips, pretzels etc...  the table decorations were various shapes and sizes of construction vehicles. 

The caution tape was used over our coffee table and desk in the family room.  There was a stuffed Bob the Builder on the table and any other bob toys were used to decorate every nook and cranny of our house.  On the steps in the entry way, small matchbox construction vehicles were placed on the edges of the open stairs.  A plastic wheelbarrow was placed on the hearth of the fireplace with all the treat bags in it. They were Bob the builder store-bought bags.  An idea I had was to get our large black wheel barrow out and put in the entry way for guests to put their presents upon arriving.

The lunch was peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches, an apple, goldfish crackers and a juice box in a paper sack (workers lunch).  I made labels with Bob the Builder pictures downloaded from the web site and then added "Brenna the Builder" or "Liam the Builder" on the labels. 

For the adults, I had fruit salad in a bucket with a toy shovel for serving and their sandwiches in lunch bags as well. the labels had the names of the sandwiches, not the adults names (Ham and Swiss, etc... ). In addition to the cake, I served "dirt", pudding, whipped cream, gummy worms and crumbled Oreo cookies on top.  I served it in smaller buckets with some artificial trees poking out the top and some worms coming out of the dirt. 

We played great games.  We had a bingo made from the computer and bob the builder stickers. A table of 5 rows/5 columns was made and the middle square had the child's name in it.  So for the 10 kids in attendance, I had to make 10 different cards.  Then I added the 16 different stickers in various places on the 10 cards.  For the remaining 8 squares, I added things like "3" as my son was three.  This was fun for all ages of kids.  I sent the bingo cards home. In the future, I would laminate them to send as a placemat. 

Then we had a "dress the builder" relay. There were two teams and they had to select one team member to dress. The teams were given a T-shirt, a flannel shirt, jeans, socks, work gloves, goggles, tool belt and tools. The first team to dress the person one the game. The prizes for Bingo were Bob the Builder store bought cups.

The last game was a construction game. Each person was given a shoe box. I put many different items on the table. (rubber bands, material scraps, wrapping paper scraps, straws, glitter glue, stickers etc…) and they had 20 minutes to construct a building. The adults had ballots with categories "most creative", "tallest", etc… In the end, each child won…as was planned all along. Their prize was a plastic construction dump truck or fork lift that had gumballs in it. I found these at the dollar store as well.

For the treat bags, I found wooden carpenter rules and metal rules at the dollar store.  Each child got one of these.  They also got a roll of Bubble tape and some other candy. The two and under crowd got books (Eric the Excavator and Dwayne the Digger from the Dollar store.) I had other games planned but ran out of time.  I also had a Bob's birthday party book to read. 

My son got a sand box and the plan was to end the party with the kids playing in the sand box with his construction toys, but it was pouring down rain!!! It was not even missed.  The party was a success and my son loved it!!! He ran around, as three year old kids do not walk, and smiled at everyone!!  It was a ton of work, but the look on his face was worth it!!!

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