Dora Pirate Party -3yr- Cardboard Singing Bridge

We did a Dora Pirate Adventure theme party for my 3 year old daughter. We had about 12 kids over. Most were all from our daughter's daycare and a few other children were from my wife's work. 

We scheduled the party to be at a local park and rented a pavilion. The pavilion was perfect as it provided protection from the Sun. The park seemed like a good idea because it had two regular parks, a train ride and a water park but no one used any of those.  I purchased a Dora Pirate Adventure pirate ship(which can be bought for around $100). I built a cardboard ship around the plastic Dora Pirate Ship and painted it accordingly. This increased the boat to fit almost 12 kids versus the 3 that would fit just in the plastic boat playhouse. 

I got a blue tarp and painted numbers 1-7 to represent the 7 Seas. If I had to do it over I would purchase some numbers for street address or print them up on paper and tape them down as the paint on the tarp comes off very quickly.  Next I painted up a singing bridge from two large boxes.  Now with these items we can find treasure island.  We had Dora Tattoos and make foam pirate hats for all the kids to start things off.  

We purchased the Dora music CD and brought a cd player so we could play: Dora's theme song, Map, Backpack, Swiper, Twinkle Little Star and We did it music during the adventure.  I called all the kids together and asked them if they wanted to help Dora find the Treasure. And they all responded Yes! I had them get in the boat which was in the middle of the pavilion and all the parents were watching from the benches around the boat. I had torn out a page of a Dora book that had a picture of "pirate" map and showed the 7 Seas, Singing Bridge and Treasure Island. I scanned the page from book on our computer and printed them up in color and gave one to each children so they could participate. 

Before we could get into the boat I asked the kids who do we ask for help when we don't know where to go? They responded the Map! We played the Map theme song and asked them to look on their maps and tell us where we needed to go and they did.  We had the kids pretend push the boat into the water like they did in Dora's Pirate Adventure CD and say El Pujea, Push!.   The kids then piled into the ship and I had a stuffed toy baby jaguar and placed him on the blue tarp that represented the 7 Seas. The kids automaticaly started saying we need to save him.  I asked the kids who helps us with stuff on Dora's Journies? They said Back Pack!

We played the theme song for Back Pack! I had a Dora backpack from one of my daughter's collection. I had put in a plastic hammer, plastic cell phone, plastic comb and a cardboard floatie with a string.  I pulled each of the wrong items out and asked the children if this would save baby jaguar and they said no. I pulled out the cardboard floatie that I had painted just like the floatie on the video with some normal string and they said that is what they need. I gave it to my daugther to throw to baby jaguar and attached it to baby jaguar and she pulled him in. The kids were having a good time already.  We showed them the 7 seas and said we all have to count to 7 and they did it.  

Next we asked them were do we go next and either by knowing the video or looking on their maps they said Singing Bridge. I pulled up my cardboard boxes I painted to look like the singing bridge. I told the kids we need to help Singing Bridge sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. We played the song from Dora's CD and all the kids were singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This part was probable the most precious part of the whole event to hear them singing the song.  I had a Color Printout of Swiper as all the dolls of swiper we own are small. I had the Swiper music playing and right away the children started crying "Swiper is here". I picked up the color printout of swiper and hid behind the Singing Bridge and moved Swiper around so the kids could see him.

The kids were yelling and saying there he is. Right on que when the CD song of Swiper was saying Swiper no Swiping then the kids did the same thing.  I had purchased 2 dozen of those cheap party telescopes and gave each kid one. I asked there were are we looking for next and they said, "We need to find Treasure Island."  I told the kids to start looking around with their new telescopes and we placed to cardboard treasure chests (buy at any party store) and placed them on a table. The kids then found "Treasure Island."  I called the children over to the table and opened the treasure chests and there as a dora mesh backpack for each of the girls and spongebob ones for the boys. We placed bubbles, notebook, dora pen, whistles, crayons and etc in them for the kids. The kids were really happy. 

We then had a Dora Pinata. We filled it with ton of supplies and had them pull the pinata instead of beating dora with a stick.  We had a Dora Pirate themed cake made up. The food was simple stuff from cheese sticks and other stuff like that. We tried to keep it simple.  The kids ran around and played all together. I am still surprised none of the kids wanted to go to the closet kids park or go to the water park.