13323

Thomas Tank Engine -4yr- Thomas Twister

April 2006

Deirdra in New London , PA, USA

Honorable Mention

Thomas the Tank Engine Party- 4 year old.  

My son wanted to have a Thomas party for his 4th birthday. 

I bought pre-made Thomas invitations that said "All Aboard" on the cover and cut the back off and threw it away. On my computer I printed a "boarding pass" on sticker paper and pasted it to the back of the cover with the party information. I put a clip art of a train on top and below wrote:  "Boarding Pass for the (name) Birthday Express"  Departing on: date Departure time: time Track: house number  Station: name of road Reservations: RSVP info here It's Full Steam ahead for a special celebration!   

We had the usual store bought decorations but used my son's birthday present "Thomas at the tank yard" train set which was continually running as the table center piece. We had several huge 3-D Mylar Thomas balloons, as well as latex Thomas balloons for decoration and the kids later each took one home. 

My son's birthday is in July so we had a few great outdoor activities, but some could be used indoors as well. Some were messy but the kids went swimming afterwards so it wasn't that bad.   We had printed coloring pages of Thomas characters with crayons for the kids while waiting for all to arrive.  

Next we played "Thomas Twister".  I took a coloring book picture page of each character and glued them to plastic plates in red for James, blue for Thomas, yellow for Duke, green for Percy, and white for Harold to make a Thomas version of the game twister.  I put the plates in rows and used the spinner from the twister game. The kids loved getting all twisted up and really had a blast playing this game. Later we used the plates to play Frisbee toss.  

Paint the train- I took a white bed sheet and with a sharpie marker drew a big train on it. My husband stapled it to our wooden fence and I bought bottles of washable paints, brushes, foam stamps, sponges etc. out for the kids to paint the train. They loved this activity, and ended up painting themselves as well as the train! I filled an inflatable pool with bubble bath and the kids jumped in to clean off afterwards.  

We played a pool "ice cube" game. We divided the kids into teams using colors red for James..blue for Thomas etc. I used swim rings to float a team colored empty bowl around the pool, and dumped a huge bag of ice cubes into the water. Each team had colored plastic spoons and using them had to pick up as many ice cubes as possible and deposit it into their team bowl. The team with the most cubes won. It was a hot day and the cubes melted fast, but the kids loved this game.  

We also had a pony for rides on the "pony express". The kids each got a bandana and an engineer hat (oriental trading) for the ride. We took a photo of each child on the pony to later send out with thank you cards. 

Next we had Thomas ice cream cake and undecorated cupcakes with frosting and assorted candy so the kids could decorate their own cupcakes. They used their engineer hats as party hats, bandanas for "bibs", and we gave them wooden train whistles (oriental trading) instead of traditional party blowers. I put Thomas stickers and stamped the kids names on the whistles to tie in the theme. This activity was messy and noisy, but loads of fun.  

Afterwards we had a Thomas Piñata which I made because I couldn't find a Thomas one. I just bought a generic round piñata and cut a big Thomas face from a paper party table cloth and glued it on. It came out cute. 

For Goody bags I made a few Thomas items myself. I glued Thomas pictures to bottles of bubbles from the dollar store. I glued Thomas pictures to notebooks and included a Thomas pencil. I put Thomas stickers on ring pop packages making them into Thomas pops. Along with the engineer hats, bandanas, train whistles, piñata candy and Thomas balloons each kid left with an armful of stuff!  

We made hand stamped Thank you cards with trains and enclosed the pony express photos to send out to the kids.

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