Birthday Party Ideas For Kids (Girls)

My niece is turning 7 this February and my sister and I are planning to throw a gala birthday party for her. The occasion is doubly special as this is the first birthday she is celebrating at my place. So I spent hours searching the net and innovating some cool party themes for the little one. Here are some of the ideas.

Happy Feet Birthday Party

Invitations: Make your own with card stock paper. Make basic snowflakes or more advanced penguins and write on them- "Bring your dancin' feet to celebrate ______'s birthday!"

Decorations: Plenty of white, blue and silver streamers, fluffy white snow, paper snowflakes and white confetti make a perfect Happy Feet atmosphere. Add pictures of penguins on the walls wherever you can. Give each child a black and white penguin cap or a Tuxedo tee-shirt. The shirts can be fashioned with easy-sew, black felt vests worn over plain white tee-shirts. Serve Tuxedo cookies and snow-cones, or prepare white frosted cup cakes. Top with coconut, or a bit of white sugar to add sparkle.
Games:

• Penguin Egg Race

Use a plastic egg and a special penguin walk, to pass the egg from one player to another. Divide the children evenly into teams. Provide one plastic egg to each team. The players will place the plastic egg
at their feet and "scoot" along to a designated spot and then return the egg to the next player.

• Snowball Race

You'll need:
Styrofoam balls or balls of white yarn, spoons and mittens for each team.

Play this game as you would any relay race. Divide into teams. Each player takes turns putting on mittens and balancing a "snowball" on a spoon while racing to the other side of the room. Drop the snowball into a bucket, return to the team, pass the mittens and go to the back of the line. First team to complete the race wins!

Around The World Theme Party

Hang maps and atlas pages, and make signs with country names and basic facts on them. Flags make excellent wall coverings as well as festive pendant decorations. Suspend pinatas (from Mexico,) stamped lanterns (from Morocco,) and paper globes (from Japan.) Set your table the way the French do (fork on the left, knife on the right, spoon facing down and horizontal above the plate,) use chopsticks (Asia) or your hands (India, Africa.)
Make sure you inform the kids or their parents to choose a particular country and wear costumes keeping that in mind. You can also arrange for some costumes yourself to save others from any expense.

Party Favors: Fill your party favor bag ( You can use baskets, woven textiles or even Benito boxes!) with gourmet international goodies: candy from Japan and France, spicy nuts and legumes from Mexico and China. Miniature flags and globes would be perfect, as would pocket atlases, noisemakers and balloons.

Games: Have yours guests pretend they come from imaginary countries and ask them to design their own flags! Supply pens, colored pencils or paints in blue, red, black, yellow and green, and large sheets of white butcher paper. When the flags are finished, you can either fly them outside, or save them as party favors.

Food: Just create an amalgamation of the best and the most popular food items the globe over and see how thrilled the kids are.

A Backyard Stargazing Sleepover Party

Ask everyone to arrive at 6:30 p.m. in time for a little fun and then dinner. All the children (and any should bring their own sleeping bags. Set up enough tents in your yard to accommodate all.
If you will be cooking outside on a grill, make sure it's located a safe distance from the tents.
You can purchase a star map borrow, or rent a telescope.

Moon Walk Game - Cut out large, crater-shaped circles from brown paper bags, and number them sequentially. Lay out an obstacle course with these shapes, so that they are fairly close together, but not touching, making sure sequential numbers are contiguous. The object of the game is to have the children take turns moonwalking (jumping) over the craters in numerical order without touching them. Explain the concept of gravity, and how astronauts were able to walk on the moon.
Rocket Relay Races - Divide the children into teams and supply each team with a flashlight. Create or purchase a cutout of a quarter moon, and cover with reflective tape. Each team is a rocket and each astronaut on the rocket must race to the moon with the flashlight and back, handing the flashlight to the next astronaut on the rocket.

Decorations: Cover the food table with a black cloth and silver star confetti. Make a simple solar system model to use as a centerpiece. Decorate the table with rocket ship models. Make large cutout stars and cover with foil. Hang off all available trees. Add moons and suns if you wish.

Food: You must serve Tang, the drink of the astronauts. Serve a plate of moon rocks (Swiss cheese cubes) and asteroids. Also, serve Rocket dogs by inserting a narrow craft stick into cooked hot dogs, and pushing the stick into a Styrofoam sheet that has been covered with foil. Make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cut out shapes with star, moon and sun cookie cutters. Make sugar cookies with star, moon and sun cookie cutters.

Favors: If this is a birthday party and you want to send the children home with favors, you might include a copy of the star map, flashlights or books on space.