I LOVE birthday parties. When Todd and I were first married, the Relief Society in my ward did an Enrichment Activity on birthday party themes for kids. I didn't have any kids, but went anyway. They had SO many ideas! Pictures moms brought of parties they'd thrown with all kinds of themes. They gave us a packet with a bunch of party themes and suggested games/decor. I was instantly hooked and couldn't wait to have a child of my own to do a party for.
When Brielle turned 1 year old, I couldn't justify inviting a bunch of other 1-year olds to come party together. But I invited extended family over to watch Brielle eat her first cake all by herself. And of course I couldn't hold back and I made a theme, a cake, and a pinata for the older cousins. Brielle obviously didn't care much, couldn't really even open her presents without help! But I had a blast doing it. Really these parties are the most fun for me!
When Brielle's Pirates and Princess party last year was over and everyone was going home, Brielle announced to me that next year she wanted a Rainbow party. I thought that sounded fun. In an earlier post I mentioned that it was a little difficult to find ideas on the internet for this party because of the life style often associated with rainbows. At least that is mostly what came up in my searches. I didn't want any parents to get the wrong idea from our party or be upset. Of course they weren't and everything was great.
I'm posting pictures of everything and explaining it in detail in case someone visits the blog by a search engine looking for Rainbow Party ideas for their kids. (You won't find much help on the net!) So if you normally read my blog, sorry for the lengthy details.
(Pictures of the invitations are in the previous post) The table was set with a blue tablecloth. I cut out white paper in the shape of clouds for place mats. The plates were one color, the cups another, the napkins, forks, spoons, etc. Between the tablecloth and dishes, we covered every color of the rainbow. We were going to inflate balloons with helium and tie them together in a rainbow shape but ran out of time. So we blew a few balloons up by mouth and let them drift around the house. We also used different colored streamers to decorate the room.
I drew a big rainbow on a large piece of butcher paper and taped it to the wall. When the kids arrived, they used crayons to color in the rainbow where the proper colors go. This worked to remain on display showing the proper order for later activities. They did a really good job! I like doing coloring activities first in stead of games because some kids are early and some are late, and this way no one has to feel like they missed anything, and no one sits around waiting either.
Once everyone came, we did a Rainbow Fish activity. I handed out foam fish I had cut out and drawn a fin and eye on. They sell these online pre-made, but it was much cheaper to buy a pack of foam sheets and make my own fish. Girls got pink, boys got blue. Then I handed out glue pens- very inexpensive way to allow everyone to have their own glue, and to keep from getting messy like large bottles of glue can be. They each got a handful of colorful buttons and glued them on their fish for scales. I like doing anything with glue early on so it can be mostly dry when the party is over.
Being a rainbow party, the nature of it was really about art and crafts. So our next activity was also of the creating nature. The kids made Fruit Loop necklaces. They each got a piece of plastic stretch string and a small bowl full of Fruit Loops. I didn't think to have a fruit loop tied to one end before hand, so the kids did have to wait for me to tie the end of each one to begin, so if anyone does this, I would suggest having that done before hand. But I did start the activity while most children were finishing their fish, so that's a thought too. This also takes the time to tie the end once they are done, so having a helper is a good idea. Todd was helping me. The kids LOVED eating their fruit loops, but we wanted them to save them to wait until the necklace was complete so they could actually MAKE one. So we sprinkled Skittles down the center of the tables for the kids to snack on while making their necklaces.
They had been sitting long enough and were ready, by this point, to get moving. So we did our hunt for the Pot of Gold. I bought my bigger pot last fall on Halloween's clearance from Oriental Trading (orientaltrading.com), advertised as a witch's cauldron. The small pots were from the Saint Patrick's Day clearance sale from the same web site. With the recent scares from chocolate coin candy, I opted not to do gold coins. I used Hershey's Nuggets (used to be called Treasures, but they are the same thing) and Rolos. The candy is delicious and both wrappers have a great golden luster.
There were 6 clues hidden around the house, each on a piece of paper, each a color from the rainbow. They knew to hunt for the orange clue after the red, and the yellow after the orange and so on. I chose to do it in the house. Not only are there lots more places to hide things, but it was possibly going to rain that day too. It was so cute to see all the kids bouncing up and down like popcorn popping in my bathroom pointing up at the tip top of my shower door when they found a clue there. They all scrunched into my small bathroom like sardines waiting for me to take down the clue. It was sooo cute, I wish I got a picture of it. This game was so fun for them.
When they found the pot of gold, I broke out the small pots and they all filled their own pots from the big one.
After that was food time. We decorated cupcakes with different colors of frosting and made rainbow fruit kabobs (minus blue- Walmart was out of blue berries the day before). The kabob activity came with all sorts of disclaimers from me. I told them they couldn't play with their kabob sticks because they could hurt someone, and they couldn't even touch the sticks until everyone had fruit on their table and I said "Go!" They were very careful with them and did great.
Last was present opening. The party started at 1:00 and the final present was opened at 2:58, so all in all, these activities took almost exactly 2 hours. It wasn't raining out, so the kids played outside in the back yard until parents came.
The kids each received a paper sack to take their pots of gold home in. The sack also had rainbow bubble gum balls in it and rainbow swirl suckers. They grabbed last minute hand fulls of skittles to put in their bags too.
It was tons of fun to do. Even having had a baby just over two weeks before. It's too much fun for me to pass up each year! Brielle loved her Rainbow Party.
