Little Mermaid -4yr- Beach in a Bottle Invites

For our daughter's fourth birthday we had a Little Mermaid Birthday Party.  I found so many wonderful ideas on this site and hunted on the internet for other ideas as well. 

First, I collected small used water bottles, washed and dryed them out and removed the labels.  I used Goo B Gone to get rid of all the sticky adhesive and the remaining stuck on paper.  I printed up personalized invitations using some Ariel clip art.  The invitations read:  "A message in a bottle for _________.  Ariel invites you to Anne-Marie's birthday party on May 5th at 2:00 p.m."  I then rolled the invitation into a narrow tube, tied it with some curling ribbon and inserted it into the empty water bottle.  I then added fish-shaped confetti and closed the cap.  On the outside of the bottle I applied Little Mermaid stickers as well as other glittery fish stickers.  We hand delivered these invitations to her neighborhood friends. 

On the day of her party, we had an Ariel "bubbler" from the Disney store on our front porch blowing bubbles as the guests arrived.  For decorations, we blew up about 50 blue, sea-foam green, white and purple balloons and attached long blue and purple curling ribbon to the balloons.  I hand-drew or copied clip-art fish and cut them out and attached them to the curling ribbons at various heights on the ribbons and let all the balloons float to the top of our two story family room.  The effect was ocean-like, with the fish "swimming" through the sea of balloons and curling ribbon. 

On one wall leading into the family room I hand drew more fish, lobsters, coral, sea horses, etc, cut them out and taped them to the wall for more "ocean" atmosphere.  On the archway leading back to the family room I hung light and dark blue and purple curling ribbon and attached more sea creatures and tropical flowers, courtesy of clip art. 

Around the house, I put out the Little Mermaid toys that we had accumulated over the years as well as other ocean toys.  We have a large chair in our family room upon which I draped shimmery blue fabric.  That was "Ariel's grotto" where Anne-Marie opened her presents.  The kitchen table was covered with ocean blue fabric and more fish confetti.

For crafts, they could do a free-form collage using blue craft foam rectangles and small shell and fish stickers and small shells.  They made an octopus from black construction paper, small styrofoam balls covered with black tissue paper and wiggle-eyes.  I had downloaded a bunch of Ariel coloring pages and stapled them into little coloring books and put a contstruction paper cover on each one.  I also had a foam aquarium craft that I got from Oriental Trading Company that they really enjoyed working on as well. 

For games we played Fish, Fish, Shark (Duck, Duck, Goose), we had crab-walk races and did the limbo to "Under the Sea".  We did a freeze dance to "Under the Sea" and when the music stopped, everyone had to freeze and name a different fish or sea creature.  We also played "Find the Mermaid" which is a lot like Hide and Go Seek" but as the children found my daughter, they all had to stay QUIETLY in the same hiding place with her, until ALL the kids found her.  They loved playing that over and over. 

I also made up a "treasure chest" and filled it with pieces of bubble wrap (the large-size bubbles) and told them that they had to help Ariel "burst" the bubbles.  They also had a great time with that one---jumping on the bubble wrap, sitting on it, etc.  They also made up their own impromptu game--trying to jump up and catch the curling ribbons and balloons. 

I ran out of steam when it came to the food.  We had a really beautiful Ariel-themed cake made up at a local bakery---it even looked like it had a sandy beach on it.  I placed some Ariel figures on the cake as well.  For other food/snacks we had cheese cubes with fish-shaped toothpicks, Buzz/Princess fruit snacks, shark gummy fish and juice boxes. 

We had goody bags with fish stickers, and other ocean themed small gifts and Ariel sea-shell bracelets. 

I had a wonderful time researching and planning this party and our daughter and her friends had a wonderfully fun time, too.