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Emily's Princess 4yr - Pin the Kiss on the Frog

July 2004

Debbie in Carrollton, TX USA

Special Mention

We hosted a Princess Party for my daughter's 4th birthday.  We used some ideas from this site such as the invitation resembling a royal scroll with the King requesting Prince (name) or Princess (name) to attend Princess Emily's 4th Birthday Gala wearing their best prince/princess costume.  We mailed the invites in tubes that we cut down from fabric bolts or blue print rolls from an architect's office.  This was much cheaper than buying mailing tubes -- free plus postage! 

We presented wands to princesses and swords to princes as they arrived. (We brought extra dress up clothes for those who forgot or didn't have them.) We decorated the room (a room at our rec center) with lots of purple, pink and silver crepe paper and balloons.  We set up a craft table for crown making.  On the table, we had precut crowns (available at Oriental Trading or US Toys on the web), jewels (available at hobby or fabric stores) castle/king/queen/dragon/wands/swords stickers, plastic plates filled with glue (one plate per four kids) and Q-tips (one per child).  While waiting for all to arrive, they decorated their crowns by using their q-tip to glue on jewels and simply sticking on stickers. 

While the crowns dried, we played a few games.  Since we had 20 kids, we seperated them into two groups of ten.  We had a parent at each game to assist.  One group of ten played a game called "Kiss the Prince Frog".  We painted a cute frog with a crown on his head onto a piece of thick poster board.  We cut out red, heart-shaped lips resembling a kiss and numbered them on the back.  The children were told to remember their number and then were blindfolded and turned around three times and then directed to the frog to place a "kiss" on him and turn him into a brave prince! All participants received Princess fruit snacks after their turn.  The closest lips to the frog's mouth won a prize.  At the same time, the other half of the group played "Slay the Dragon".  We painted a cute dragon (be careful to not scare little ones) on the thick poster board and cut a circle in his belly. (We used an overhead projector to help with the dragon -- not a very good artist!)  The children tried to slay the dragon by throwing a soft ball through his belly. They got three chances -- we had three balls.  Each child received a chocolate gold coin for their bravery.  They loved this game and returned in line to play a couple more times.  Be sure to have extra chocolate coins!  The last game was the Royal Stomp Ball.  The children had balloons tied with curling ribbon about 18" long and then tied to their ankles.  They were to dance at the ball (we brought a cd player and classical music) and stomp their feet to try to bust each others balloons while keeping theirs from busting.  This was really cute.  The kids had a "ball"!  The one with their balloon left received a prize.  After the games and once the crowns dried, we stapled them together to fit each child's head.  Then we announced each Prince/Princess as they walked the royal carpet and then took Polaroid pictures of each child with their crown and wand/sword for them to take home.

We made a princess castle cake similar to one we saw at familyfun.com.  It was gorgeous!  We made it a little larger and alternated the cake layers with pink and white cake.  We added a draw bridge by gluing two wafer cookies with frosting and cutting them into an arch shaped door and then added some ribbon to resemble the "chains" that draw the bridge up and down.  We also used sugar cubes spaced apart to resemble the top of a castle.  We added "Happy 4th Birthday" to the flag on the middle turret.  We decorated the "party" table with pink table cloths, clear plastic plates and clear plastic wine glasses with pink, purple and silver curling ribbon tied to the base. (We also glued the base to the goblet -- they didn't seem to stay together real well.)  We folded the pink paper napkins fancy and stuck a clear plastic spoon in the folds.  We placed three "strawberry cream" Kisses on each plate. (They are made by Hershey Kisses and are wrapped in silver with pink checks.)  The castle cake was made on a big pedastal cake plate along with some finger foods on a three-tiered platter.  Since it was in the middle of the afternoon, we just had dipped strawberries, sugared grapes, and stick pretzels stuck in cubes of cheese to represent The Sword and the Stone.  We had lemonade in the plastic wine glasses -- pink lemonade of course!  We sprinkled individual vanilla ice cream cups with purple & pink sprinkles and served it with the cake.  We created a "throne" for the birthday girl and a guest to sit on while opening gifts.  The guest brought their gift to the throne and sat with our daughter while she opened her gift. This made each child feel special. After she opened her gift, she then gave a "goody" bag gift to her guest.  These were clear plastic bags by Wilton with simply a few candies along with a bracelet for the princesses and a punch ball for the princes.  These were then tied with puple, pink and silver curling ribbon -- we used a lot of that!  Parents and children had a great time and couldn't say enough good things!

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