Curious George Party -5yr- Rescue the Bears

We just had a fantastic Curious George party for my sons Dylan’s 5th birthday!

He saw the Curious George tableware in the Birthday Express catalog and knew that was the theme he wanted, so we ordered it. I wasn’t sure how we were going to come up with a piñata (his request) that matched the theme, but our local party store had circular piñatas with a space to personalize. Houghton Mifflin’s official Curious George website has great coloring pages and activities. I printed up a page from the website showing George at the zoo with the words Happy Birthday at the top, colored it and glued it on. I printed up more Curious George coloring sheets for posters.

The poster on our front door had George on his bike and read Curious about Dylan’s party? Come to the backyard, and I used a picture of George standing on a paint can with a brush in his hand and the words Come on in! as though George were painting them for the gate. The wooden play structure in our backyard, decorated with balloons and streamers, made a perfect focal point for the party and a great break between activities. 

Most of the party activities were based on the Curious George books. In Curious George Rides a Bike, George makes newspapers into paper boats and sails them, saves a baby bear and gets to ride his bike in the animal show at the end. Our first activity was to rescue small stuffed bears hidden in the bushes. This was a big hit (the kids got to keep the bears they found), but one of the bears was so well hidden we didn’t find it until after the party!

We used the folding instructions in the Curious George story and floated paper boats along with rubber duckies in our plastic wading pool and had lots of fun splashing around.

Then we did a relay where the kids pretended to be George. They walked like monkeys over to the play structure, climbed the stairs, went down the slide, rode a hippety-hop across the grass, and then got on Dylan’s bike and rode along the path in our side yard. At the end my husband gave them a prize (an animal finger puppet) and took their picture, with the kids holding a stuffed Curious George if they wanted. My idea was that at the start of the relay each kid would put on a green hat and shirt like George wore, but no one wanted to put it on, probably because they were hot already, so I didn’t push it.

We’re still going to print up the pictures to use in thank you cards.

After breaking the piñata, we played Pin the Birthday Hat on Curious George using a coloring sheet that matched the one on the piñata. Some kids got remarkably close  maybe they could see under that blindfold!

In Curious George Takes a Job, George gets himself all tangled up in spaghetti at a restaurant and then has to clean all the dishes as punishment. Instead of spaghetti I gave the kids each a roll of toilet paper and let them unroll it and wrap each other up in it. Then we gathered up the paper and made clean mud in a large tub by adding grated Ivory soap and water. It becomes a great goopy mess that some kids loved and others didn’t want to touch.

After that we sang Happy Birthday, ate Curious George banana bread (recipe from the website), watermelon (nothing to do with the theme but Dylan wanted it) and banana splits, and the party was over. We all had a great time!