11475

Butterfly 6yr - Musical Flowers & Butterfly Hunt

July 2005

Allison in Shreveport, LA, USA

Special Mention

Butterfly party 6-year old Butterfly party, What fun!! 

Invitations:  We scanned a picture of a butterfly and did shaped text in the wings that said, Ive found my way out of my chrysalis to tell you some news you wont want to miss; So flutter on over and follow me.  Its (Birthday girls) 6th birthday party.ö  We cut out the butterfly invitations, rolled them up and stuck them inside toilet paper roll cores taped on the ends for cocoons.   For the ones we could hand-deliver, we attached the cocoons to branches that we pruned off of some of the bushes in our yard.  My daughter had a blast taking them to friends and family. 

Decorations:  My daughter and I made butterflies from coffee filters and clothes pins (or two craft sticks rubber-banded together) and hung them all over the house and yard. 

Activities:  The first thing the girls did when they arrived was to make butterfly magnet.  We made them out of coffee filters like the ones we used for decorations and I had attached a magnet to the back of the clothespins ahead of time.  They colored the filters with washable markers, and we took them outside to spray them with water to give them a tie-dyed effect.  We left them out to dry in the sun and the girls found them later and put them together (tucked the filters into the clothespin) to take them home. 

Games:  Next, we did the Metamorphosis Race (obstacle course with a twist).  I purchased wings for each guest at the dollar store and wrote names on them with glitter paint, and I made antennae for each girl with colorful headbands, pipe cleaners, and pom poms.  For the race each girl found her wings and stuck them into a collapsible tunnel which was the cocoon.  Then they started the obstacle course.  For the caterpillar phase, they crawled through the grass around cones we had set up.  For the cocoon phase, they crawled into the tunnel and put on their wings and antennae inside, then crawled out as fluttering butterflies.  For the butterfly phase, they had flight practice by flying around the trees and jumping over obstacles (swimming noodles propped up on blocks).  It was a hot summer day, so by then our little butterflies were all ready for some nectar. 

The next game was Musical Flowers.  It was like musical chairs, but instead of sitting in chairs, they danced and fluttered around our garden of flowers that my daughter and I made from coffee filters that we had spray painted by mixing different colors of paint with water in a spray bottle and then attached them to wooden skewers and staked them in the ground in a circle.  When the music stopped, the butterflies were supposed to find a flower to smell.  The girl who did not find a flower was out but got to keep one of the flowers. 

After cake and ice cream, we had a butterfly hunt.  While the girls were eating cake, my mother went out into the yard and hid the butterflies (foam or construction paper attached to smarties candy and pencils), caterpillars (small slinky toys with a pom pom glued to the end for the head and cut pipe cleaners attached for antennae and feet) and cocoons (butterfly stickers rolled up in brown paper from old grocery bagsà toilet paper roll cores would have worked well for this too).  The girls were each given a butterfly net from the dollar store and told that over 100 butterflies had escaped into our yard.  They were given a list of what to find to make sure that each girl got some of each item that had been hidden.  They ran around the yard catching the items in their nets.  They left with their nets full of goodies, the butterflies they had made, their flowers from the musical flowers game and their wings and antennae.

Food:  They got to pick a flower (green straw poked through a hole in a foam flower) from a decorated flower pot (which was recycled from my daughters gardening party from last year) and place it in a green cup to suck down some nectar (lemonade).  Next, we gathered all of the guests for a group picture. 

Cake:  After that we went inside for cake and ice cream.  I actually did two cakes, a butterfly and a caterpillar.  For the butterfly, I cut a 12-inch round cake that I had made into 4 pieces and arranged them to look like wings with 6 tiny cupcakes down the middle.  The cupcakes had letters iced on them to spell my daughters name.  I used white icing on the whole thing.  To decorate it, I a piece of wax paper into the shape of the wings and then cut a few shapes out of it and used it as a stencil.  I poured a different color of sugar into each shape.  Then I peeled it up and used the same stencil flipped over for the other side.  It turned out very cute and was not too difficult to do. 

For the caterpillar cake, I made my favorite chocolate bundt cake, cut it into 3 sections and made a curvy body out of it.  I did not put icing on it because this particular cake already has a glaze on it, so I just decorated it with candies for eyes, mouth, antennae, and feet in the same colors that were on the butterfly cake.  It was also very cute and simple to do. 

We wanted to have only girls, but I have two younger sons, and there were a few other younger brothers that came.  We didnt want them to feel left out of the fun, but we didnt have enough butterfly wings for all of them, so we made some really cool dragonfly wings out of coat hangers, Styrofoam, and some iridescent stuff wrapped around them.  The boys were 2, 3 and 4, and much to my surprise, they wore the dragonfly wings and didnt want to take them off.  My daughter loved the party, and all of the girls had a great time.  I used many ideas from this website but added my own twists to them and also a few new ideas.  It took a lot of time to plan for everything, but I started with the ideas a couple of months ahead of time and did a little at a time, so there was not much to do at the last minute.  Not too expensive thanks to the dollar store.  Its amazing what you can do with coffee filters, pipe cleaners, pom poms, and a glue gun!  Lots of fun!!!

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