Lion King Party -3yr- Paper Sack Vines

Our son loves the Lion King so we decided to have a Jungle/Lion King Theme for his 3rd birthday. 

I purchased all the Disney Lion King paper products I could find which included the invites, thank you's, table clothes, banners, plates, cups, and napkins.  I also found adorable animal themed forks and spoons from Dixie (which the kids took home with them after the party they loved them so much!)  I decorted the house with vines I made from brown paper bags.  I cut the bags length-wise and rolled them like a snake. I attached huge green leaves to them.  We hung them from the ceilings and the doorways.  The house really looked like a jungle plus my son had a blast making them with me. 

As a centerpiece for each table we tied Lion King birthday balloons to bananas and put animal crackers and chips on the table for our guests.  My husband pre-recored as many jungle" themed songs as we could find which included songs from Lion King plus "Jungle Love" "Jungle Boogie" "Welcome to the Jungle"  etc When our guests arrived they were greeted with these lovely songs and eagerly went to the stations we set up which included a play dough station with animal cookie cutters Hullaballoo Animal Facts DVD station Face Painting and Lion King paper bag puppet station ( the kids put on a puppet show by making their puppets sing to the Lion King songs).  This worked out so well because it got the kids involed right away and put them into the spirit of the theme. The parents also got involved in a game I made for them.  They were asked to list on a piece of paper as many animal/jungle related songs they could think of.

Once all the kids had a chance to rotate through each station we ate lunch.  Unfortunatley my lunch wasn't really theme related but eating under the jungle made up for it.  I served salad bread and baked ziti.     

After lunch I organized whole group activities which included  Pin the Tail on the Lion and Jungle Boogie (freeze dance; we used the pre-recorded jungle songs for this too).  After all of our dancing we went to the "movies".  My husband put the Lion King Movie onto a projector screen and the kids ate popcorn and settled down while we set up the cake and coffee. This also gave the adults a chance to relax and think of song titles.  They would be award one point for each song title and another point if they could name the artist. 

I made my own lion cake by baking a rectangular sheet cake and cutting it out into two circles for the lion's head.  I used banana flavored cake and filled the center with pudding bananas and strawberries.  I also baked cupcakes for the kids and arranged them around the lion's head to create the mane.  It looked adorable!  I couldn't find Lion King party hats so I made my own. 

During the face painting station the children's faces were painted like lions so I wrapped brown paper bags around plain party hats and fringed the ends.  I glued on lion ears and wrote on each hat " Their name is a party animal!"  When cake was ready I passed out their hats and sang "Happy Birthday".  After cake we cracked open my homemade lion pinata. I took a box and wrapped it in yes you guessed it another brown paper bag!(What a way to recycle those bags)  I covered the bag with a wig from Halloween that looked like a lion's mane and I glued a lion's face to the front which I found on my clip art program. 

The children used their lion party hats to collect their loot.  The parents then counted how many songs they listed and the person with the most won a prize.  We gave jungle scratch-off lottery tickets out as prizes.   My son then opened his gifts and gave each child a favor for celebrating his birhtday with him. 

The favors included animal crackers crayons and a copy of a black and white clip art of a lion picture which I wrote:  "Thanks for celebrating my birthday with me. Hope you had a wild time!" animal mazes and an arts and craft animal magnet they could complete at home.  I also included the directions for the play dough recipe and each child took home some play dough in a plastic bag from the station.    

Overall this was a fantastic theme to plan for.  Your imagination can really run "wild" with ideas.  The kids had a blast and so did the adults!"