Woodland Birthday Party: The Invitations

My youngest child wanted a Woodland birthday party this year. We had a lot of fun meeting the challenge of planning a Woodland theme that wasn't too girly, too babyish, or too violent. (I always have to throw in that requirement when I'm having a party for little boys whose idea of a good party plan would involve many weapons and lots of uninterrupted free time to run around hitting things/people.)

We made the invitations on blank note cards. My son cut strips of scrapbook paper to be our trees. We added stickers from the Martha Stewart collection at Michael's Crafts. We added, "Join a small group of friends in the Woods for a birthday party," with all of the party details. We do not live in the woods, but we hoped to transform our home and yard into the Enchanted Woods for the party.

Robin Hood Hat

It is party-planning time again! This time, my 6 year old has requested a Woodland Party. My children are notorious for requesting party themes that are too obscure for Party City. I searched the Internet for Woodland themes and found many hits for fairy parties and baby showers, but none that would suit a boy turning seven.

The only site I found useful, Zhinka dinka doo, had a clever idea for an activity in which a woodland elf leads children on a hunt for treasures by leaving notes for them: a scavenger hunt! But, alas, the link to the pattern was broken and I needed to improvise.

I first made a template from newspaper and cut felt to match.  The straight side of the semi-circle is 18 inches long. The highest point in the arch is 11 inches.

After folding the semicircle in half, I sewed both straight sides.  The side that had been the straight part of the semicircle needed a 1/4 inch seam, but the fold only needs a seam that runs right along the fold (the purpose is to provide just a little bit of support to the fold).

I folded a flap on either side and glued it in place. 

This was so easy to do that I was able to make 8 hats in (far) less than an hour!

Special thanks to my mom for modeling and providing much needed

emotional support through this craft! : D

Self-Portraits

Inspired by a great activity from a great art teacher's site called Art Projects for Kids, the cousins made self-portraits this summer in the style of Chuck Close.

First we traced black-and-white print-outs of 'face shots' through carbon paper onto graph paper.  It isn't easy finding carbon paper anymore, but luckily for us, my parents had some leftover from the 1970s.

The next step was tedious, but creative.  The kids colored each square of the graph paper with a different design, having no two adjoining squares match.  The colors of the squares matched what the kids imagined would be the color of that part of the portrait (for examples, a variety of browns might compose the hair, a variety of pinks would make the lips).

Not only was this a fun activity for a rainy day of Camp Gramp, but the children tell me (now that winter is upon us) that some of them have learned about or seen Chuck Close's work since we did this activity; they can relate to it now that they've experienced it.

Marble Mazes

 

With some scrap wood, nails, and rubber bands, the cousins made marble mazes this summer at Camp Gramp.  Using an old idea from Family Fun, we first made grids on large squares of wood, and then hammered nails at the grid intersections.  I like any activity that gets kids hammering, since hammering is a great skill AND it is satisfyingly noisy!

Once the nails were in place, rubber bands could be placed in any configuration to create a maze. We tested the mazes with marbles to make sure the rubber bands weren't too high or too low.  Then we tried each other's mazes and had a great time!

 The joy of this creation is that the children can remove the bands to reconfigure their mazes again and again.  It will never get old!  Because we planned to keep our mazes flexible, we did not paint them as Family Fun did in their example.  Some of the children did decorate their mazes with markers, though.

Stop-Motion Films

Camp Gramp is a week each summer in which my children and their cousins stay at their grandparents' house, swimming and doing crafts each day, playing games and watching movies each night.  It is a magical time.

Each year I plan a series of crafts for the kids to do, but as they are collectively aging, the crafts need to become more sophisticated. 

This summer we broke the kids into small groups to make Stop-Motion Films.  We started off by reminding them that some films are made this way (Corpse Bride and many of the old Rankin Bass holiday specials, such as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, are good examples).  I showed them a short film I made of a toy moving across a table and explained that a series of photos can be pieced together on the computer to make it look as though an object is moving.

The kids had a great time shooting the films.  Editing the films on the computer, including adding sound effects, music, and voice, took several days.  The youngest group helped me edit their film, but the two older groups did most of their editing independently.  The results were brilliant!  We watched the films on our last day of Camp and put all the short films on DVDs for the families to keep.

The Things I Do for Scouting...

Those are coffee grinds. They are spread all over my patio to dry in the sun.  The kind people at Starbucks have been giving me their leftovers so that the 400 cub scouts in our district day camp can make dinosaur fossils with me next week.  My car, my yard, and my house smell like coffee. 

At least it's good coffee. 

And at least I finally got a sunny day with no rain. 

My husband ran out to rescue all my coffee the other day when a sudden storm caught us off-guard. Not a pretty sight!

Greek Party, Part 4: Creating the Scene

To transform our home into Ancient Greece, we started at the front door.  A while ago, I went a little crazy with chalkboard paint, so I have many of these framed surfaces from the dollar store.  Earlier this month, we happened to go on a lucky yard sale expedition with my parents...at four or five of the yard sales we hit that day, my kids found Happy Meal toys from "Hercules".  Those toys came in handy for the party!

We put a few more yard sale characters around the Temple of Party Favors.

For lunch, we served olives (my kids love putting black pitted olives on their fingers before eating them), ambrosia (marshmallows, pineapple, pear, Cool Whip, cinnamon and nutmeg---gross, but delicious!), fruit, pita bread sandwiches (make-your-own, with lunch meat, hummus, mayo, cheese, etc.), and junk food (of course!).  We made up labels for the food, such as "Poseidon's Goldfish" and "Hydra Necks".

The Nectar was a sherbet punch made with rainbow sherbet, ginger ale, and pineapple juice.  The cake was a trident (my son dressed as Poseidon).

Perhaps the most exciting part of the decorating was creating a labyrinth in our back yard.  While researching for this party, I learned that what the ancient Greeks called a labyrinth is actually what we now refer to as a maze (who knew there was a difference??), so I used a simple 7 X 7 grid to create a maze.  I found that any size smaller than 7 X 7 created a maze that was just too simple to solve. Each of our panels were about 30 inches, and we made many of the panels 'double length' to use less bamboo stakes.

Using a 300ft plastic table cover roll, I cut panels to secure onto bamboo garden stakes, which can be purchased at a garden supply store at very low cost.  I punched holes on the sides of each panel and fed the bamboo stakes through the holes. We used tape to make a small flag under the top hole so that the panels would not slide down the poles.

My husband and son put paneled stakes into the ground, following the maze plan I drew on graph paper.

We had two problems with the labyrinth.

One is that our cat would not leave it alone.  She needed to be kept inside during the set-up and party.  Some panels needed to be taped where her little claws made their mark!

The other problem was the wind.  It wasn't strong enough to knock down the bamboo, but we had to tell the boys that if they were in the labyrinth when the wind blew, they should just stand still and wait for it to stop (as opposed to pushing against it and possibly tearing it).

  They did a great job following that advice.  It was kind of funny to see them all 'freeze' when the wind started up.

The labyrinth was a big hit, both during the party and afterwards.  The boys used it for a game during the party, but after the party, kids used it to play house, to play hide-and-seek, and even to try to navigate once it got dark.  Even the adults were having a great time with it.

Greek Party, Part 3: Costumes and Cake

COSTUMES

Using a headband and some sparkly leaves, it is easy to make a laurel wreath for a costume. (The blue and green sparkly sticks are seaweed for Poseidon.)

I used clear tape to wrap the leaf stems around the headband.  If this was something I wanted to keep for a long time, I'd use floral tape, but I was aiming to just use this wreath for the party and perhaps reuse the materials afterwards.

Poseidon's crown had the wavy blue and green sticks (which I removed from the stems) to give the illusion of ocean waves.  With a green toga on top of his light colored shirt, it looked great.  (There are lots of web sites describing how to don a toga, so I won't post that here.)

For his trident, I cut sparkly foam (it came with a sticky backing) for the front and back, and stuck the front and back together on a wooden dowel.  Couldn't be easier!

I added more of the wavy sticks to the base, once again to give the idea of water.

TRIDENT CAKE

My son wanted a spice cake trident for the party.  Normally, we like to bake from scratch, but I have found that to shape a cake, using a box mix is best.  Cakes from a mix tend to be quite sturdy.

I baked this cake in a 9 X 13 glass dish.  The top part of the trident was cut from the rectangle; from the discarded pieces, I shaped the bottom 'stick' of the trident.

Using a serrated knife, I sliced off the edges and top to make the two parts match.

For the icing, once again I find that store-bought icing is sturdier than home-made.  First, I added a crumb layer.  Then I added a top layer of icing and decorated the cake with colored sugar, green for the top and brown for the stick.  I sprinkled blue all over the cake and the tray.  To add details, I used sparkly gold gel.

Greek Party, Part 1: Goody Bags

My son loves Greek Mythology and has been asking for years to use it as a theme for a birthday party.  I distracted him with other themes (what kind of seven year old has a toga party?), but now that Percy Jackson has made mythology popular again, the time has come.

I searched the web for ideas and found very few that were appropriate for the pre-frat-party crowd.  Over the next week or so, I'll share what I've found online as well as my original ideas for throwing a Greek Mythology party for kids. 

Let's start with GOODY BAGS!

You will need toilet paper tubes (or any tubes cut to that size), white paper, a marker, scissors, glue, Styrofoam pieces for the base and ceiling, and straight pins.

Using Martha Stewart's advice for egg dying, I have foam boards full of pins.  For this project, I'll remove the pins and flip the foam over so that no one can see those splotches of dye.

(It will get put back with the Easter decorations after this party.)

Cut the paper to fit the size of the tube; then glue the paper to each tube.

Draw lines on each tube.  Cut paper circles to tape on each end (but only tape one end right now).

Fill each tube with goodies.  I included a variety of candy, including a candy eye-ball to represent the eye of the Fates, a snake to represent Medusa, and a labyrinth I downloaded from the Percy Jackson web site.

To secure the pillars, I inserted pins diagonally up through the foam and into the bottom of each.

I also added one pin through the top of each pillar. This temple of goody bags will be moved several times between now and the party, so it needs to be somewhat stable.

Finally, I pinned a triangular sheet of paper on the front and back of the temple to complete the look. 

Magic Sticks

Have a cousin with us this week, so I was lucky to find inspiration on Crafy Crow for this fun activity today...painting sticks!

The kids searched for sticks and then had a great time painting them. Without any direction, they were free to use their imaginations.  Their sticks turned into magic wands.  (We never tire of Harry Potter in this house.)

One stick became a rainbow for a lucky garden gnome.

Nail and String Art

When we pick crafts for Camp Gramp, we want them to be fun (of course!), to be useful in some way, and to teach some sort of skill during the process.  Nail and String Art is an oldie but a goodie. I have fond memories of my grandfather giving me a block of wood, a hammer, and some nails when I was bothering him in his workshop back in the '70s.  To a child, it is a great feeling to hammer nails, even if it means hammering fingers every once in a while.  It is the perfect activity to teach physical limitations, empowering the child with ownership over the product and the possible pain.  Surprisingly, there were very few injured fingers when we did this activity at Camp Gramp. Kids learn very quickly how to hammer without hitting a finger.

Having seen this craft a few years ago in Family Fun magazine, all those memories came back to me and I was determined to one day fit this craft into Camp Gramp.  As usual, things don't always go as smoothly as I hope, and this year I was particularly busy during the week before Camp Gramp started.  As a result, on the day of this craft, my father was busy cutting the wood while I was still searching his garage for appropriate nails.  We weren't so well prepared.

But children have a way of surprising everyone.

Even with my extreme lack of preparation --I had given very little thought to how I'd explain the directions; I had no example to show them; I just kind of threw some string, a baby food jar full of nails, and some hammers on the grass and gave a quick speech about making a clock shape with the hammered nails-- the kids took easily to this project.  Even the youngest, age 5, made two of these!

The children didn't seem to need much direction at all.  Each came up with a creative way to wrap the string.  Some wrapped one color in a 'spider web' and then wrapped another color on top to form an initial letter.  Others made circular patterns.  Some made stars.

The finished projects are displayed in their bedrooms.

Camp Gramp Key Chains

During the week of Camp Gramp, the kids do many crafts.  We try to make the crafts meaningful and useful, so we spend all year in search of the coolest things to make.  This key chain  (found on Ucreate) ranks right up there.  It is useful, and the process teaches the kids how to use a sewing machine. All that is required is a few straight lines of stitching, so the kids are exposed to using the machine without the frustration. (I can't be the only crafter who has to get the sewing machine manual out every time I start a new project!!)

The kids and I started the week with a field trip to JoAnn Fabrics (try taking seven kids into that store...see what happens) so the kids could pick out two long ribbons and one short ribbon.  The longer ribbons were mostly cut to order, so we got each cut to a quarter yard.  A quarter yard was more than enough for one key chain.  For the shorter ribbon that wraps around the key chain in the last step, I encouraged the kids to share spools of thin ribbon.  That required some artistic juggling, but we managed.

First step: sew together the two fat ribbons, using one line of stitching down each side.

Second step: insert the metal key chain (also found at JoAnn Fabrics, in the purse craft section) and sew the ends of the newly stitched fat ribbon together to form a loop that holds the metal key chain.

Third step:  pinch the loop of fat ribbon together, about a quarter-inch above the metal key chain.  Wrap the thin ribbon around this area and sew it securely with two straight stitches along the edges of the thin ribbon.  (This part was tricky for the youngest crafters--due to the thickness of the many ribbon layers-- so I had them depress the sewing pedal while I maneuvered the key chain through the machine.)

Each crafter now has a key chain made to order!

Camp Gramp Batik T-Shirts

Every summer I take all of my parents' grandkids to their house to spend the week for what we like to call Camp Gramp.  We swim, go on trips, watch movies, and do crafts.  The kids pitch in by doing a big chore each day to help their grandparents (weeding is a biggie) and by rotating daily chores such as setting the table, cleaning the bathroom sink area, and under-the-table crumb patrol.

We make t-shirts each year to wear on our day trips. In the past, we've done tie-dye and bleach pen designs. This year we made Batik Shirts. 

Making the shirts took about two days.  First, we drew designs on plain t-shirts with gel glue.  White glue tends to run too much for the look we wanted. We used white shirts, but any light color would work.  It is important to put a plastic grocery bag or other barrier inside the shirt so that the glue and paint do not go through to the other side of the shirt.

After letting the glue dry for a day, we painted over the design with watered-down acrylic paints.   To get light colors, add more water.  For darker colors, add more paint.

We let the painted shirts dry for a few hours.  Then we soaked them in warm water and gently rubbed off the glue.  Some of the paint does run out of the shirts at this point, but once they dried in the sun again, the painting was made permanent.  The area where the glue had been is now the color of the shirt (white, in our case).