2849

Butterfly 4yr - Pin Antenna on the Butterfly

November 2001

Sara in Little Chute, WI, USA

Special Mention

My 4 year old daughter wanted a butterfly birthday party.  She helped me make her invitations. 

Invitation:  I found a picture of a butterfly in a coloring book an copied it on my scanner.  I gave her the copy and asked her to color it.  When she finished, I scanned the colored copy into the scanner and made individual cards for everyone with all the necessary info on it. 

Decorations:  I just painted signs with poster paint on tag board and outlined them with glitter paint.  One sign said "Hooray! It's _________Birthday!  One said simply "Butterfly"!  I also bought some really sparkly butterfly cutouts at a office supply store(a package of 24).  I glued the backs together and made 12 butterflies to hang around from the ceiling.  I put a hole punch in the top and tied fishing line to each one and clustered them around the signs that I made from the ceiling.  I also hung the signs from the ceiling with fishing line.  It really made them look like they were floating with the butterflies. 

Games:  I made a butterfly out of tagboard to play "Pin the antennae on the butterfly".  It was about the size of a large piece of tagboard.  Then I took a pipe cleaner for each child at the party and folded it in half and twisted a little loop on the bottom.  I labeled each one with their name.  When it was time to play the game I blind folded each child gave them the "antennae" with a piece of tape on it and had them try to stick it where they thought it should go.  It was really fun to see where they all ended up.  Then when the game was over everyone took off their antennae and I twisted everyone's "antennae" to a very inexpensive headband so they could all be butterflies at the party. 

Food:  At the lunch table I had it all set with the plates, napkins, and cups.  In the cups I had straws with a craft foam flower on it so everyone could pretend to be a butterfly sipping "nectar" from their flowers.  I served red juice.  All the kids loved to pretend they were butterflies. When the kids first arrived at the party I had them all sit in a chair around me and I read a cute story about a class that watched a caterpillar turn into a butterfly.  They really liked it and it explained in the end how the butterfly eats it's food from the flowers.  This way they really put the sipping nectar from the straws all together. We had butterfly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.  I made sandwiches, cut the crusts off  and imprinted each sandwich with my butterfly cookie cutter.  I thought I would do the imprint versus actually cutting it out so I did not waste so much bread and it was really just as cute as if I'd cut them all out. 

Cake:  For dessert, I made butterfly cupcakes.  I just baked regular cupcakes and frosted them with white frosting.  On top I cut gummi worms in half and put one half down the center of the cupcake.  On each side I put a colored round cookie to simulate the wings.  I cut pieces of shoestring licorice for the antennae.  They really looked cute. 

Favors:  At the end of the party my daughter handed out her gift bags.  Inside I had a butterfly made from crafting foam with a old fashioned candy stick in the center for the body and pipe cleaner antennae, a small bag of fruit chewy candy and a copy of a butterfly to color.  To make the butterfly to color, I made a copy and scanned it to my computer and I added the words

Thank You!  For coming to my butterfly birthday party!  Love, __________!  There actually was time left at the end of the party to have the kids color their butterflies to take home with them.  I also did one more thing to help eliminate a lot of arguing over where everyone was going to sit.  Before we sat at the table to eat I had my daughter walk around with a basket of flower suckers(small suckers with a construction paper flower stuck in the middle)with a number on them.  When they picked their sucker, they had to look underneath the paper flower for their special number and go to the table to match the number up.   That told them where they had to sit.  I had the numbers written on their napkins to match.  This way we did not have any hard feelings if someone could not sit where they wanted to.

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