17877

Fairy Party -6yr- Find the Fairies

April 2008

Laurie in Batavia, IL, USA

Honorable Mention

Super fun fairy party ... I love planning my daughter's birthday parties and for her 6th, we created a whimsical fairy setting in our home using home-made decorations and affordable fairy accessories purchased from haloheaven.com and orientaltradingcompany.com.

INVITATION: I purchased adorable fairy wall decals from the dollar store and made the invites from scrapbook card stock. They read: In the land of fairies, a magical place, sits a small little fairy, with her smiling face. Her name is Morgan and she wants you to come to celebrate her birthday with lots of fairy fun! She'll be waiting for you on this magical day, Please say that you'll come and with fairies you'll play! I also put a note into the invite telling parents that the kids could dress up in leotards or fairy dresses if they wanted to.

DECORATIONS: I purchased pastel tissue paper from the dollar store and made giant tissue paper flowers. Directions for flowers can be found on familyfun.com. You need 5 sheets of paper for each flower, so plan accordingly. We made enough flowers for each girl to take one home at the end of the party. You will also need bamboo stakes (Ace Hardware), pipe cleaners and curling ribbon (dollar store). I tied 3 pieces of long curling ribbon to each flower instead of the green streamers that Family Fun recommends ... I think they looked more magical.

My daughter already had a hanging canopy in her bedroom, so we brought that down into the living room and hung it in a doorway to make a backdrop for taking photos. We put several giant tissue paper flowers in flower pots (with flower foam) on either side of the canopy to create a little grotto area for the photos. I placed several flowers in single vases and scattered them around the room/tables also. Not a lot of work, but the large size of the flowers really packed a punch. I also concentrated on just 2 areas of the house to decorate, so the impact was big.

ACTIVITIES: We had a large group (16 girls), so I divided them into 2 groups to make the activities more manageable. When girls arrived, they were given a paper pink or green butterfly name tag/necklace to wear which designated the team they were on.

For our first set of activities, the pink" team went into the "fancy fairy beauty shop" (make a poster) for hairspray glitter (Walmart in the party section) and let them decorate with fairy stickers and glitter glue. A party helper laminated them for the girls punched a hole and tied a ribbon at the top so they were ready when the party was over. You could also do this without laminating (I have a machine and use it whenever possible!) (2) Fairy dust boxes … we saved the plastic rectangular gerber baby food containers and filled them 1/2 way with silver glitter (Walmart).

Then the girls decorated with flower foam stickers. Before the party I had cut and glued oval cardstock over the "GERBER" engraving on the lids and wrote "Fairy Dust then used glitter glue to outline the oval. After 15 minutes, the teams switched activities.

GAMES: After the craft/beauty shop, we played 3 games together as teams.

(Game 1) Find the Fairy Parts." I printed and colored 4 Fairy Paper Dolls that I found online. I colored 2 fairies in green hues and 2 fairies in pink hues. I also free-handed a few fairy accessories (fairy dust bags butterfly friends wands halos and wings … the dolls I found had small boring wings so I just cut them off and made my own). I then laminated the pieces of the dolls and cut them out into separate pieces. Each doll-set was 8 pieces (doll dress 2 wings fairy dust bag butterfly halo wand)So I ended up with 32 pieces. I then put each piece into an envelope and marked it with either a GREEN marker or PINK marker depending on the color of the piece inside. I then hid the envelopes around the yard (do before the party starts!) and let the girls loose to find the envelopes that matched their team color and assemble the "puzzle." I took a photo of the assembled puzzles before the party and had them available for the girls to use as a key when working on their puzzle. This game was a BIG HIT!! Prize was a halo purchased from haloheaven.com … everyone got a halo we just gave the winning team theirs first.

(Game 2) Shovel the snow to make room for spring. I used 2 poster boards to make  mini-gardens of fake flowers (dollar store) poked through the board (tape on other end to secure). I then dumped 1 bag of cotton balls (dollar store)onto each board and gave the girls each a plastic spoon to use to "shovel" the "snow" off the flowers and dump into a bucket at the other end of the room. The first team to empty their garden of snow won. Prize was a wand again purchased from haloheaven.com and everyone got one.

(Game 3) Fairy Wing Match Up. I printed a ton of fairy wings from various online sites colored them so that each set of wings was unique. I then separated the left wings from the right wings and put one set at one end of the room and the other set at the other end. The kids worked in teams to see which team could find the most matches. Be sure to make some "easy" matches for younger kids. Prize was fairy wings purchased from haloheaven (about $3 each).

More Activities: We then separated into groups again - one group got pictures taken in the grotto area and the other group played a ball toss game. As each girl finished she got in line for the other. Food: We served treats picnic-style. Butter cookies decorated as flowers white chocolate covered pretzels with pink sprinkles (fairy wands) mini cupcakes and Fairy Fizz punch (lemonade with raspberry sherbet).

FAVORS: As a final game we sat in a circle and passed around a jar filled with silly activities (sing the ABC's while hopping up and down; pretend to be a chicken; etc.) We played like "hot potato" After doing the activity girls picked a favor (fairy ballerina  doll ornament wrapped in tissue and tied with a rainbow elastic hair tie). Unlike hot potato the girls simply sat back in the circle to watch everyone else have their turn. They waited to open the favor until everyone had a turn. As the girls left they each picked a giant tissue flower to take home.

THANK YOU: As a thank you note I made a quick card using the photo I took of each girl.  The kids had a blast at the party and I think the moms were impressed too!  "

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