Mary Poppins Party - Spoon Full of Sugar Race

We have had this party twice in my family.  The children loved it so much the first time, another daughter chose to do it for her birthdayas well.  It was a Mary Poppins Theme.  My children love the movie and so it worked well.  I sent out invitations that were nothing special.  Something to the effect that they were invited to a Supercalafragilisticespialidoious Party".  I left the play room messy and told the children that they clean it up before the party began.  It was a total hit!  What a laugh! 

We played the music "A Spoonful of sugar" in the backgound and they cleaned it up "spit-spot".  

We played a spoonful-of-sugar relay race game next.  Each child was given a spoon and they were divided into teams.  The first child of each team was given a sugar cube and they had to race across the room and gently put the cube onto the spoon of the child next in line.  They ran back to next and passed off the cube to the next If you do not have as many children, they can all get a sugar cube and race from point A to Point B as fast as they can without losing the sugar cube.  

I made a pathetic looking "Bird Lady" on the steps of St. Paul's but the children thought she was beautiful.  I cut out custruction paper "toppins" (2 pence) and they played a version of "pin the toppins on the bird lady".  They each got a little bag of bird seed as a prize for participating.   I have a fireplace and I taped little goodie bags up in the chimney (just out of sight).  I used duct tape or packing tape. 

I made a chimney brush out of a dowel with some pipe cleaners taped tightly to an end and then fanned out.  Use your imagination.  The kids knew just what it was!  They took the little broom and "swept the chimney" and got a goodie bag.   If your children are old enough to be readers, we played "Ilove to laugh!"  I took out a joke and riddle book from the library.  I copied some of the jokes onto slips of paper and they took turns coming to the front of the crowd and picking a joke and reading it to try to make the children laugh.  That was a hit.

We did it another way when they were not yet reading.  My husband got up and said a few jokes and they were told to try to keep a straight face as long as they could.  That was a hit too!   This party was not done around a meal, so we just had dessert.  I had little menus for the children.  There choices were "Raspberry ice" "tea" and "cake".  The raspberry ice was raspberry sherbet, the tea was apple juice. 

The cake was so simple and shows my limitations in the kitchen.  I made a simple layer cake.  I found a coloring book that had some horse pictures in it.  I made some copies of the horses, colored them with pretty colors, cut them out, taped them to a drinking straw and stuck them in the cake.  It sure beat the cost of those "Carosel Cakes" I have seen at the craft stores!  There was a small glitch when it came to lighting candles with the paper horses all around. 

My daughters said, "Just take a picture quickly without the candles lit, take off the horses and then we'll light the candles."  That's what we did.   The craft for this party was a simple kite made form large construction paper.  The children were encouraged to decorate it with markers, crayons and scraps of tissues paper glued on.  They put on tails made of yarn with some sraps of fabric knotted around it. We had this party for a group of 6 year olds and a group of 8 years olds.