Minnie Mouse Party -6yr- Ring Around the Cheese

After a trip to Disneyland, we chose as our theme a Minnie Mouse party the classic version of Minnie Mouse with the red dress with white polka dots. There was no ready made party ware available for this specific theme, so this is what we came up with: 

INVITATIONS: I found a drawing of Minnie Mouse’s head in the Disney Magic Artist book (from the library) and copied it onto manila cardstock then cut out ears and nose from black paper and a red tongue from white paper to glue onto the card for color. I then cut it out into the shape of Minnie’s head. I cut out another shape of Minnie’s head to be the second page with the party information on it, and then tied the two together with a red and white polka dot bow. It said Minnie Mouse is here to say Elizabeth is 6 Hooray! I think every mom commented on how cute the invitations were, and reported that several of the little girls hung the invites up in their rooms or wanted to keep it.  

PARTY SET UP AND DECORATIONS In the front yard we had a Minnie Mouse balloon (found a large one of just her head) and a Mouse hole. To make the mouse hole I found a large piece of cardboard, cut out a half oval shape mouse hole, and painted a black border around the hole. I then painted little signs on the cardboard pointing to the hole saying This way to the party and No cats allowed. I also wrote cute sayings on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk saying no cats allowed more cheese please, etc. In the back yard we had a craft table covered in a yellow table cloth, a gift/snack table covered in a red and white polka dot cloth (you can find red material with large white polka dots at Walmart). We had streamers and balloons in red, white and black everywhere. We also had a large Minnie Mouse piñata (dressed in the red dress with white dots) that we found at a local piñata store. We had planned for her to be the piñata to break open at the party, but she became a tea party playmate for our children and they couldn’t bear the thought of breaking her open, so we had to make other plans for a piñata and this one became a decoration. 

CRAFT: I always provide a craft for the children as they arrive that they can do if they wish. This time it was stringing red, black and white pony beads and tribeads onto cording.  

DRESS UP: All little girls received, upon arrival, a pair of Minnie Mouse mouse ears. I made them by buying several cheap ribbon-covered wire headbands (didn’t want the plastic kind was afraid a girl would stretch it and it would break). I then covered each with black grosgrain ribbon by wrapping ribbon around and around it, glueing each end with hot glue. I then cut the two mouse ear shapes (basically circles with the part that would stand up from your head cut straight) out of black craft foam and hot glued these to the top of the headband. In the center of the ears I glued a red and white polka dot satin ribbon. These were a big hit!!   SNACKS: During the party I had a bowl set out of cheese crackers (mice love cheese) and M&M’s in red, white and black. I also had a pitcher of water and cups set out if anyone was thirsty. 

CAKE: We had a large round cake that was red with large white polka dots all over it. On top it said Happy 6th birthday with 6 white candles, with a 2 ½ Minnie Mouse figurine (available from www.justaddpresents.com) standing between the candles. 

PINATA: We made our piñata by blowing up 3 balloons and taping them together with masking tape to form a Disney mouse head shape (one balloon on bottom with two on top to be ears). We put a string around it from the bottom up. We then covered the shape with layers of strips of newspaper with a mixture of water and flour as glue. When this dried after a few days, I covered it with black tissue paper. Next I fringed black crepe streamers and wrapped the piñata in row and row of these, so the entire piñata was covered in the black fringe. On top we put a red bow, which was just two large pieces of red tissue paper gathered in the middle. When finished, it looked just like the black Mickey/Minnie mouse head motif, and no one could believe we had made it ourselves. We stuffed it with candy and cute plastic smile face rings.  

FAVORS: At the Disney store I found Minnie Mouse beanie dolls on clearance for $2 each!! If you are having any type of Disney party, check the clearance items often until your party and you may find something really neat. These Minnie Mouse beanie dolls had her dressed in a red and white polka dot dress. She was holding a flower and had a tag on her that said for teacher. I just cut off the teacher tag and had the perfect party favor. 

GAMES AND ACTIVITES: Guests arrived and crawled thru the mouse hole (if they wanted to, otherwise they could walk around) to get to the front door and were given their mouse ears headband. They then came to the backyard to play on the swing set or do the craft. About 15 minutes later I started a BALLOON GAME. This was a great way to get everyone’s attention and pull the girls together in the yard to start playing games. I had blown up MANY red and white balloons and had them ready in trash sacks. I started emptying in the sacks in the yard and asking the girls to see how long they could keep their balloons afloat. When done we just left the balloons around the edges of the yeard.

NAME GAME: We then sat in a circle and there were several girls there who didn’t know each other, so I went around the circle and said for each girl Barbara, are you here? And then Barbara would say squeak!. Every once in a while I would stop and listen, and say did you just hear a cat?? Mice don’t like cats!

The girls LOVED this and would stop me and say they heard a cat. While this was going one of the grandparents hid cheese around the yard for the CHEESE GAME. The cheese was actually triangle shapes of Styrofoam (I bought large rectangle pieces and cut triangle shapes) that were painted a mixture of yellow and orange. We waited until the girls were distracted with the name game because we didn’t want the girls to be picking up the pretend cheese wedges and us not being able to find them for the cheese game.

For this game I asked each girl to find me 1 cheese wedge and bring it to me (you can ask for as many as you want, but I had made one for each girl plus a few of extras for those that might be too well hidden). We put all the cheese in a pile and stood in a circle around it.  Again, I would ask the girls if they heard a cat. They would squeal with laughter every time and pretend to be scared, holding their hands up like little mice.

Since we were standing in a circle around the cheese, I suggested that instead of playing Ring a Round the Rosy, we play RING AROUND THE CHEESE which is the same song as Ring a Round the Rosy, but we saidRing around the Cheese, Yummy Yummy Cheese, Cheese Cheese we all fall down. We did it loud, soft, very slow and then very fast. We then divided the girls into two groups (we had 20 girls). 

Half of the girls went to do a BEAN BAG TOSS. We had a picture of Minnie’s head (again from the Disney Magic Artist library book) and we threw bean bags into Minnie’s mouth. No one kept score, we just had fun trying to feed Minnie.

The other half of the girls went to do a PIN THE BOW ON MINNIE GAME. Minnie was drawn (from the Magic Artist book) and each girl had a construction paper red bow shape with tape on it to try to pin onto Minnie’s head. Then the girls switched so everyone got to play both games.

I gathered the girls together again in a circle by saying I think I hear a cat!! And we all ran together to be safe. I then explained that since we were all mice, the birthday girl’s father was the cat, and that we would be playing the CAT AND MOUSE GAME. I had already put a strip of tape across the yard. The cat would be on one side of the tape, and all the mice would be on the other side. The cat would jump over the tape and all the mice would have to run to the other side before he could catch them. So the idea is to always be on the other side of the tape.

Of course no mice were ever caught, but after a few minutes some started to tease him by putting a toe over the line, so we moved onto the KITTY CAT ARE YOU HUNGRY? GAME. I suggested that we ask the cat if he was hungry, and we said Kitty cat, Kitty cat, are you hungry? And the cat said no, come closer, and kept telling us to come closer each time we asked until eventually he said yes!! And would chase the mice trying to catch one. The rest of the party, the girls would occasionally break into Kitty cat are you hungry and he would lunge at them and there would be great squeals of laughter. At this point we brought out the cake and then opened presents.

After this we did the PINATA, giving each girl 3 hits while all the other girls stood behind a line of tape on the ground. I’ve found this works best, otherwise, the children watching keep getting closer and closer and you don’t want anyone to get hit. The birthday girl handed out party favors, thanked her guests and said goodbye.  

THANK YOU NOTES: I cut bow shapes out of red construction paper. On one side we wrote our thank you note. On the other side I made circles of white glitter to look like Minnie’s bow. 

UNUSED IDEAS: I always plan extra games to play, depending on how we were doing on time. One was Minnie says, basically Simon says but saying Minnie instead. The other was a Hot potato game, using one of the pretend cheese wedges.   Our party was for 1 ½ hours and we all had so much fun!!