Berenstain Bears Party -3yr- Bear Games

My daughter was set on having a Berenstain Bears party for her 3rd birthday. I couldn't find any ideas for a BB party but I found some good resources online and made up my own. Here's what I came up with and my daughter just loved the party!

For invitations, I found a picture, from the book B.B. & Too Much Birthday, of the bears at a party and wrote You're invited to come and play because it's _____'s 3rd birthday! I listed the date time and location then ended it with Please call Mama Bear at the Treehouse and put my number.

The party was in our lower level playroom so I hung a brown plastic tablecloth to cover the entrance at the bottom of the stairs and cut it in strips to walk through easily.  It made it look like a big tree. Then I hung a sign at the top of that which said Big Bear Country. I hung pictures around the walls of the BB and decorated the cake table with a red gingham tablecloth.

The cake was a 9x13 rectangle with the sides trimmed in to make a trunk and the top left full but rounded to make the tree top. I leveled off the cake for a flat surface and decorated it as a big treehouse with windows and a door like in the book. I took teddy bear cookies from the dollar store (because they were bigger than Teddy Grahams) and decorated them to look like the BBs. I tinted white frosting all the colors I would need for each bear's clothes and put each color in a Ziploc bag with a tiny hole in the corner to squeeze out very little since I was working on such a small area. I placed the bears on the cake by the front door. 

For games and a craft I set up the party to coordinate with different BB books. I didn't read each book but before each game I held the coordinating book and we looked at the pictures and talked a little about the story to tie it into each game. We started with

1) The B.B. Slumber Party and tied that to playing Limbo since you play games at parties.

2) The B.B. Get the Gimmies was tied in to playing Hot Potato to practice giving something to someone instead of getting.

3) B.B. and Too Much Junk Food. I made large paper picnic baskets from paper grocery bags with the top cut off and used to make a handle. I got out all kinds of plastic food from our play kitchen and we sorted the food into the right picnic baskets; one for veggies fruit meat and of course junk food.

4) B.B. Trick or Treat and we play two games for this book. First we tried to dress up Sister Bear by playing Pin the Bow. I drew a large Sister Bear and left off the bow. Then made several bows with each child's name and we played it just like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. I found on berenstainbears.com a link to print the bears as paper dolls with lots of different outfits for each bear. I printed several of each bear and all the outfits on cardstock so each child could pick the bear they wanted and have fun dressing up their bear like you do for trick or treating. Then they got to pick an outfit to take home with their bear.

5) B.B. and Too Much TV and we talked about all the things you can do besides watching TV. Reading of course came up so we had a Book Walk like a Cake Walk where the kids walked around to the music and when it stopped I called a number. The child on that number got to pick a BB book to take home with them. I bought a large lot of B.B. books off ebay which saved a lot of money. The kids had so much fun playing this we had to go twice which was great because each child got to take home 2 books!

6) B.B. Forget their Manners. We played Pass The Present where you wrap a small prize then wrap another prize and that present together until you have layers of presents in one big package. You pass the present until the music stops then the child holding it unwraps a layer gets the prize and keeps passing the present until each child has unwrapped a layer. We practiced saying thank you as we passed the gift. Once the games were done we made a craft connected to the book.

7) B.B. and the Spelling Bee.

We decorated foam visors. I had foam letters of each child's name in separate baggies. Each child had to find the baggie with their name spelled on it and place the letters on their visor. They had their name on the baggie to look at to get the letters in the right order. I had other various shapes to decorate with too.  Each family took home a picnic basket with a BB board game with game pieces I printed out from the BB website on cardstock and one real dice plus some color sheets.

They got to put their books paper doll and clothes visor and unwrapped toy from the party in the basket. Each child got a small red paper bag with a red gingham ribbon tie closure with their party favors. We had several small toys plus gummi bears in a baggie with a special thank you message bag topper with BB pictures bottle of bubbles decorated with BB and party horn blowers that I punched through a picture of different BBs to make it look like it was coming out of their mouths. 

The kids had a ball and it was a great party. Hope you'll consider a Berenstain Bears party too! "