Beauty and the Beast 7yr - Royal Games

Since our daughter Shanu wanted a "Beauty" cake (Beauty of the Beauty and the Beast") for her 7th b'day, we decided this year's theme would be a Princess Party.  Since I am a great fan this web site, I'd like to share with you our party plan hoping that it would help someone have a similar, fun-filled party. 

The invitations: made "Scrolls" out of hard paper, which were rolled up and tied with a silver ribbon and hand-delivered to all the guests. Wording (in Calligraphy font): went something like this: Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Princess/Prince (guest name) The King and Queen would like your royal presence at the royal celebration of Princess Shanu's Seventh Birthday On: (date) At: (address) From: (time) Please wear a Princess/Prince outfit if you have one or a party dress/suit. 

The decorations: Drew and painted  six princesses and hung them around the room with a bunch of pink and purple balloons and streamers. (If you don't want to draw, you can  download from the internet and enlarge using a copier) \*Homemade Princess Pinata filled with candies, chocolates, confetti , etc., spray painted in pink and downloaded princess pictures pasted around it.

Feast Table: decorated with a Princess table cloth (paper table cloth found at Toys R'us) with a polythene cover on top),  Standing Princess figurines (cut out from a coloring book) as the centerpiece and  princess cups and plates.  Purple and pink crepes hung across the ceiling.   

Arrival activity: made crowns for the "princes" and "princesses": Precut crowns out of gold poster board and let the kids decorate them with Glitter Pens and "Jewels"(sequins). Fastened with staples. This gave them something to do while everybody arrived and they loved decorating their own crowns! 

The Party: Guests were escorted to the royal "throne" where the birthday princess (dressed up as Beauty) sat and their named announced like "Princess Maya!"  The guest Princes/Princess would then come forward and gave his/her gift to the b'day princess with a small courtesy.   The b'day princess would then give a small courtesy in return and a small welcome gift (we gave a Cinderella's glass shoe-shaped lip gloss to the girls, and a crown feather pen with a crown on top to the boys)). Most kids thought this introduction was neat even though everybody knew each other!  Cutting of the cake and the "Royal Feast"

Cake: Beauty Cake -Got a Barbie Doll with brown hair and made the hairstyle to match Beauty's.  The skirt was the cake, decorated like Beauty's yellow (with all natural coloring) Ball Gown.  

Other Food: Sri Lankan savories, party food & sweets   Drinks: The Princess Punch (Pink Color Sri-lankan Sherbet), fruit juices,  etc. 

The "Royal Games"
1.  Which Prince/Princess am I?  Before the party, downloaded pictures of princesses and a few princes onto separate sheets, which were taped onto the kids' backs.  They were not supposed to  see or ask who they are (although many cheated ;-)). The object of the game was to discover who the figure on the back is by asking the others yes/no questions like,      Does my princess have brown hair?     Do I live under water?  

2.  Pin the slipper on Cinderella Drew a big Cinderella and a glass slipper for each kid. Kids were blindfolded, and asked to pin the slipper on Cinderella's foot.  

3.  Disney Princess Mix-Up: The object was to help the B'day Princess get a message to the King or Queen: Here's how it's done: Seat guests in a circle. The birthday child thinks of the message that she would like to send to the king or queen (parents work great for this role) and whispers it to the person next to her. The person receiving the message tells the next in the circle and so on until the message reaches the last person in the circle. The king or queen tells the message out loud and then the birthday child tells the original message. Expect the unexpected when you learn the original vs. the final mixed up message.  

4.  Dance -- Freeze Told the kids that Ursula -the evil sea witch of  Little Mermaid is threatening to FREEZE the entire Kingdom!!! When the music plays, kids dance (or jump, if they don't want to dance) and when the evil witch stops the music they all freeze. Then the evil witch (one of the kids wearing a homemade Ursula mask) tries to make them laugh by saying  funny things.  The one who laughs is out.  Instead of giving a gift to the winner/winners, we made everyone winners by giving them a bag of gifts (filled with princess stuff (girls) or pooh stuff  (boys) ) at the end of all the games.    By the time the games were over, everyone (mostly mommy and daddy ;-)) was ready for a break!

We had a comparatively quiet moment eating ice cream.  Then came the finale! -  the pinata: The candy & confetti filled pinata was hung in the middle of the room, the kids were each given a turn to hit it with a stick. When the pinata broke and the candies scattered around the room, the kids (who were by now not very graceful princes and princesses ;-))  had a great time collecting as much as they could.  Thus ended The Royal Celebration of Princess Shanu's Seventh Birthday! :-)   

p.s. If you have time, you can also do the "Pass the poison apple for Snow White" for a gift-opening game: pass a real red apple around and when the music stops, the gift of the guest holding the apple is opened. You can also do "Kiss the frog" -some kids love this, but our princess thought kissing a frog was "yucky",so we had to sadly give up this game ;-)- if you think your kids won't mind, you can draw a big frog and pin it on a wall, put red lipstick on the girls, blindfold them and ask them to kiss the frog, who just might turn into a handsome prince!  Have fun!!