Chicka Chicka A-B-C Party -5yr- ABC Limbo

CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM" A-B-C LUAU   For my daughter's fifth birthday I decided to combine an A-B-C off-to-kindergarten theme with a fun Hawaiian theme by using the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom which they had read in her preschool class. The book is about child A-B-C's who climb a coconut tree and fall out, to be comforted by their parent A-B-C's. (The children are the lowercase A-B-C's, and the parents are the upper case). It's very cute and has artwork showing coconut trees and rainbow A-B-C's on an orange and hot pink polka-dotted background. 

INVITATIONS  For the invitations, I used pre-cut cards and matching envelopes from Michael's craft store --hot pink for the girls, orange for the boys. I used scrapbooking paper in brown and green to make coconut trees on the cards, and I used A-B-C stickers to spell the word P-A-R-T-Y going up the trunk of each tree. On the back was glued a white card with the party info. It was modeled on the text of the story, and it said: A told B and B told C I'll meet you at Eleanor's coconut tree! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom there's sure to be enough room! Please come to a Chicka Chicka A-B-C Luau to celebrate Eleanor's 5th birthday..." and then the party info. It also said for the guests to wear tropical or beach attire. 

DECORATIONS: We decorated in a Hawaiian theme with a big palm tree cutout flamingoes parrots tissue flowers etc. from Oriental Trading and the dollar store. I also had a big tissue-paper sun face wearing sunglasses from Oriental Trading because the mascot of my daughter's preschool was a smiling sun face. My daughters went through their stuffed animal basket and got out the tropical ones. All the guests received a lei (flowers for girls palm leaves for boys) also from O.T. and we had some silk hair flowers available too. (We didn't hand out grass skirts but one little guest arrived in her own!) 

ACTIVITIES:   A-B-C Room: One room was set up with various ABC/writing/art activities: ABC blocks a chalkboard and colored chalk ABC magnets (and cookie sheets to stick them to since we weren't by a refrigerator!) glass markers to write on the windows mural paper taped up on a wall with crayons to draw ABC tiles from a phonics game and a stuffed coconut tree with velcro letters to stick on it (based on the book --I borrowed this from my daughter's preschool teachers). There was also an art table in the room with paper die-cut paper ABC's glue sticks and ABC stickers.  Initial Cookies: Each kid could decorate a big sugar cookie in the shape of their first initial. I made the cookies myself --since I didn't have big ABC cutters I just made the letters freehand by making the dough into "snakes shaping the snake into the letter shape, and gently flattening it. For the decorating, I had pink and orange frosting (my theme colors), and lots of sprinkles, candies and colored sugar. The cookies were on small paper plates and as each one was done, each one went into a quart ziploc bag with the guest's name already written on it in Sharpie, and the cookies were put aside to take home.  

GAMES:  

Coconut Tree Bowling: I made 26 coconut-tree bowling pins out of plastic bottles, weighted with sand. I wrapped them with brown paper packing tape to make tree trunks, and my daughters helped me cut out green palm leaves and brown coconuts, which I attached with hot glue. Each pin had a big letter of the alphabet glued on it, from a set of bulletin-board letters from the dollar store, and they were lined up in order on the driveway. The ball was a real coconut (I had several, for when kids threw too hard and the kids started cracking) and the kids had to see how many ABC's they could knock down. 

ABC Limbo: I made a limbo out of three bamboo poles (two upright and one for the crossbar). The upright poles were anchored in big plastic flowerpots full of rocks, and they had magnet ABC's (from the dollar store) hot glued on. Two older guests held the crossbar and the kids had to see how low down in the alphabet they could limbo! 

Hot Potato Coconut: The kids sat in a circle and played Hot Potato, but passing a coconut instead of a potato. 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: In the book, the A-B-C's all climb the coconut tree and then fall down with a loud Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!" I drew the alphabet on the driveway in chalk and then the kids could blast the letters off with water balloons.  

FOOD:  I had palm-leaf shaped green plastic serving trays from Oriental Trading.  I arranged six trays in a palm-tree shape on the table. I filled four of them with little kebabs on palm-tree picks: one of veggie kebabs one of fruit kebabs one of cheese kebabs and one with half ham and pepperoni kebabs and half mini hotdog and pickle kebabs. The fifth leaf in the tree was ABC (Scrabble) Cheese Nips and the sixth was rainbow goldfish. I also had two more palm leaf trays on the side that would not fit in the palm tree shape filled with mini ABC cookies and a plate full of green Jello Jiggler cubes. To drink there was pink strawberry milk chocolate milk and apple juice. The tableware was pink and orange on an orange cloth and I gave the kids pink flamingo straws.  

COCONUT TREE CAKE:   The cake was a chocolate Swiss roll like a "Buche de Noel" or Christmas Log Cake except I used light chocolate frosting instead of the traditional dark chocolate and then piped dark chocolate on to make the criss-cross design of the palm tree trunk. The filling was whipped cream tinted green. I made palm leaves out of green fondant and coconuts out of peppermint patties and I had letter candles spelling "E-L-L-I-E" going up the trunk. (I used her nickname instead of her full name so that there would be five candles for her fifth birthday.) I had extra peppermint patties so that each kid could get a "coconut and I broke up the fondant leaves and distributed pieces of that along with the slices of cake. Wow, pure sugar!! We also had rainbow sherbet cups. (I had bought an inflatable palm tree cooler, which I had planned to fill with crushed ice and popsicles, but then it was threatening rain and I didn't want to serve popsicles in the house. Of course then it cleared up, but by then it was too late, I had already bought the sherbet cups instead of popsicles and didn't have time to inflate the cooler, run and buy ice, etc. Oh well! The cake was very cute and very well-received, even without the popsicle cooler. 

FAVORS:   I had pink and lime green gift bags (the store was out of orange), one per family. Each individual child got a little palm tree favor box (O.T.) with their name on it in A-B-C stickers. These were very cute but turned out to be too small to really put anything in, so I just put them in the boxes as a decoration. (If I had been having a sit-down lunch I would have used them as place cards, but we just ate picnic-style on the floor.) They also got individual bags of fruit-slice jelly candy, palm-tree shaped lolllipops from the dollar store, and bags with a coconut tree making kit" consisting of Tootsie Rolls for the trunk green spearmint jelly candy leaves for the leaves and malted milk balls for the coconuts. Plus the girls got plastic flower necklaces and flower barrettes from the dollar store. Also in the bag were real coconut shell cups from Oriental Trading (only one per family not one per kid) and copies of the book which I got cheap from the Scholastic Book catalog (one per family and only for the younger kids). Plus they got to take home their leis and their decorated cookies. "