Dora Party -2yr- Pin The Backpack on Dora

For my daughter's 2nd birthday party, I decided to do a Dora party, as she loves all things Dora.  I made the invitations in wordperfect, it was a postcard with a picture of Dora and Boots that read "Guess who is turning 2? Open the backpack to find out"  I had glued a small purple paper backpack over a picture of my daughter..everyone thought it was really cute and original. For the party I made purple backpacks for each child to wear. I used 2 pieces of purple felt, white and black felt for the eyes, red felt for the mouth and yellow felt for the eyebrows.  I used black yarn for the handles. I printed maps from the Nick Jr. website and attached them to the sides of the bags. 

It was a really inexpensive way to go and the bags looked great. I started making them a week before the party and made 3-4 a day. For decorations, I brought a few Dora items from Party city and supplemented with yellow, purple and green decorations.  I made paper flowers out of construction paper and had them hanging from the ceiling in one of the rooms. Because Dora likes stars, I also made stars and hung them on the other side of the room.   I brought a cardboad paint your own playhouse at Target for $10. I painted it to look like Dora's house and cut an opening for a puppet show.  I brought Dora and Boots puppets off of ebay.

I decided on a Mexican/Spanish menu for the food.  We had Tostitos and Salsa, Empanadas and the kids were able to make their own tacos and burritos with all the fixings. My husband and I decorated 3 rooms for a Dora adventure the kids would have to go on at the party.  Because the party was going to be indoors, we also had games and activities for every moment of the party, we didn't want kids getting bored and going too wild. The first kids that arrived they were giving a Dora placemat to color (we got these off of Nick Jr.) 

After all the kids arrived we had them move to the arts and crafts table to make thier own Dora bracelets. We brought pony beads and string from Michaels Craft store, we brought flowers for the girls to add to their bracelets and race cars for the boys.  

Next was pin the backpack on Dora.  My creative older son had made a picture of Dora's back on posterboard and we cut out little backpacks for the kids to tape onto Dora, the partygoer that got it closest to the middle won. I had brought 2 pieces of large foam from Home Depot and spray painted them purple.  My son drew a picture of Dora and Boots and I cut out a circle and wrote next to Dora "Throw the ball through the hole You can do it"  Each kid had to throw a Dora sackey ball through the hole for their "admission" to the puppet show.  Once each kid was done, we began the show.  I created a story about Dora and Boots on their way to Tiane's party but then Diego calls and asks for help finding his animals.

As the Dora Puppet, I asked the kids if they would help us find the animals.  Of course they all wanted to, but I said we would need some help, where do we go for help.  A few kids shouted out "The Map" and I said where's the map at and they said on Dora's backpack, so I said well if you guys are going to help you're going to need your own backpacks, so my helpers handed out the backpacks which the kids absolutely loved.  I had created a map on a large posterboard and it was placed in front of the puppet house. They had to go to 3 places to find the animals (like the show).  In their backpacks were "spy" glasses to wear during the adventure. 

The first place was the Spooky forest, which was my son's room decorated with green and yellow crepe paper and leaves from outside, they had to go their to get the food for the animals, which was a small box with cereal in it (for sound.  They then had to go over the Raging River which was a large airbed with a blue sheet over it, as they went over it my son and his friend shook it lightly and sprayed blue string from the can to represent water.  The final stop on the adventure was to go through  bubble mountain which was our den which had a bubble machine going for about 10 minutes beforehand, so their were lots of bubbles, the kids had to pop the bubble and find Diego's animals (which were some stuffed animals in a basket). 

After getting the animals the kids came back to the puppet show and were given bottles of bubbles for helping and each was presented with a Dora certificate, during the adventure I had gotten the correct spelling of each child's name and wrote them neatly on the certificates.  We then told them it was time to party.  I had brought a Dora CD and played the appropriate songs during the show and adventure. It was then time to eat.  With the parent's assistance each child made their own tacos and/or burritos.  I also had chicken fingers for those that might not like Mexican food.  We then sang Happy Birthday with a Dora cake.

Afterwards we did the Dora pinata.  I didn't like the Dora pinanta at Party City of Dora's head, my daughter would have screamed if someone hit Dora's head, so I brought a pink pinata from Target and printed out pictures of Dora and her friends and glued them on the pinata.  Each kid used their backpacks to collect the candy.  It was finally time for the party to end.  I didn't make additonal goody bags because the kids had the Dora backpacks, bracelets, candy, bubbles and glasses.

The party was a great success and the parents said they enjoyed it as much as the kids. Two months later they are still talking about it and I've had a few calls for help planning other parties. The party was great and because we made a lot of things, the cost was relatively inexpensive.  It was a lot of work but it was so much fun and even at 2 I don't think my daughter will forget it, and if she does we have great pictures and a videotape to show her all the fun.