June 2016: Bird-day Party

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Caitlin’s Corner! It’s June, and you know what that means…summer break (sorry, year-around kids L)! Summer break may be fun, but also might leave you very bored. Well, I got you covered! If you want to throw a party (birthday or just for fun), here are some ideas to make it bird-themed (get ready…you might say I’m a bit Pinterest obsessed):

· Invitations: Invitations can be sent out to friends to alert them of your bird-themed party. What better way than to make the cards bird-themed, too? These pictures are just two examples of invitations (both are birthday party). Other ideas you can do are create a bird on the front of a card and have details on the back. If you want a bluebird, you could cut a circle out of blue paper and then cut and glue down feathers, a beak, eyes, and feet. Also, tou can also slightly alter what you write on any of the invites to make thank-you cards!

· Party Favors: These are bird-themed goodies that you can give your friends! It would be cute to put the party favors in bags like the ones that are owls. You could also use paper lunch sacks and glue on the parts of an owl (wings, beak, feet, eyes, ears, etc.). Some goodies you could use are birdseed, gummy worms, or colored pencils that are naturally made (I’ve seen these tree-like colored pencils and pencils around in nature stores).

· Decorations: If there is one thing I love about parties, it is definitely the decorating! To make your party feel more bird-like I would recommend adding beaks and eyes onto balloons before hanging them up (how cute!) and using colorful streamers. Another great idea is to make bird origami and then attach the origami to strings to hang from lights or wherever else they would look cool. Here is a link on instructions on making bird origami if you are interested: http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-birds.html.

· Food: Your guests will certainly get hungry if they are having fun! Some ideas are putting out candy such as gummy worms, Peeps, or chocolate eggs. Others are taking fruit cups and drawing on them so they look like chicks; creating a mixture of pretzels, mini marshmallows, or others things found in chex mix and making it “birdseed”; or creating cute little nests out of rice crispy treats and M&M’s or Skittles.

· Games/Activities: This is where the party really begins! Some classic party games that can be made bird-themed are pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey (pin-the-beak-on-the-bird, in this case), duck-duck-goose, and musical chairs (but instead of running around chairs, flap your wings to fly to the chairs and perch on them like birds when the music stops). Some other activities are decorating birdhouses and having a real game of Angry Birds! To decorate the birdhouses with your friends, you will need glue, fake grass, things that will make the houses pretty (markers, sparkles, etc.), and a small, wooden birdhouses. For Angry Birds, you would need to build a slingshot and then collect different colored dodge balls decorated as the characters. Then, stack up cardboard boxes and find stuffed animals (preferably like the pigs) on top of the boxes.

So there you have it: a bird-themed party! Now you can have a lot of fun with your friends this summer with awesome games, food, goodies, decorations, and invitations! Have a blast, and I’ll see you next month on Caitlin’s Corner!