Princess Day Sleepover -6yr- Princess Movie Trivia

Princess Daytime Sleepover  4-6 yr   This was not an actual birthday party, more of a just because party.  To make it more Birthday, add cake, candles and present opening for the Birthday Princess!  We are not permitting our daughter to do a true sleepover until later, so we improvised with a daytime version for her and some of her friends.   

To start, we sent invitations to each of the girls, detailing date, time (12 noon), and location (Royal Bedchamber) and the time their carriages would arrive to retrieve them.  When the parent called to RSVP, I asked them to bring pajamas, preferably princess ones, and the child's toothbrush.  I love to do lists and had one that I checked for the party including a timeline to keep myself on track.   

We decorated our room, which is the largest with everything princess from my daughters room.  Since we don't have a canopy bed, I took some garden supports (7 ft) and cleaned them off, put them behind my bed and draped it with different fabrics.  If you don't have an assortment of fabrics for this, check on your supply of sheets!   Everything was tied with pink bows.  At the hallway to the bedrooms, I put our tension rod from my kitchen window up with sheers tied back for a grand entrance.  We borrowed the Princess Party Vol. 2 from our library and used it heavily for the party. 

For dinner (lunch) we had a true royal banquet at the table.  We took out a manners book and decided on a 5 course meal. The first course was a fruit course and we had sliced strawberries with sugar, the second course was poached chicken breast with Rosemary and corn, the fish course was a breaded fish fillet with tomato catsup, dill and sliced carrots.  The forth course was salad of sliced romaine and tomatoes and carrot chips (this was arranged like a rose with carrot leaves).  The fifth course was dessert of chocolate cup with ice cream and strawberries.  Bread was on the table for family style service. 

We used salad plate and saucers to serve each of the courses and only used extremely small portions for each plate.  We used the royal banquet to practice table manners.  There were plenty of please and thank yous when passing each princess the bread and butter, how we can leave things we don't like on the side of our plate and we discussed when to eat (waiting for your hostess).  Not one asked to be excused early with all the excitement of so much food moving around so fast.  It worked out very well and I used two portions of fish and one breast of chicken for all the girls.  The vegetables were favorites from the can (it's not cheating!). 

I didn't have to purchase anything special except for the chocolate cups, which I already had for another party and didn't ever use.  Keep in mind that this all must be in very, very small portions. The princesses were told to get ready for bed directly after dinner was finished.  They brushed their teeth (always a good activity), wash their face and hands (washcloths were tied in pink ribbon for each) and to get into their pajamas.  This was a game in and of itself!  The bathroom needed attention immediately after, but all the giggling was worth it!  In the Royal Chamber, they each had a pillow and found space on our bed to start a story from the Volume 2 Princess Party DVD (from the library).  This gave her highness the Queen and general maid to clean up some of the kitchen, dining room and bathroom mess.  We divided up the games in two sessions. 

The first game time we played the first three games with everyone shouting out answers and getting points as if one player.  (My daughter proudly told my husband they had gotten 2 points!)  Since all the girls are experts on Princess movies and trivia, they found the games easy and fun.  We took a break for stories from some real books; we used the scholastic ones with the lessons for princesses in them and discussed how we all felt about the lessons (sharing, being a good sport, etc).  Then we did the Ariel's Treasure Hunt from the DVD but without the DVD.  It basically has a small gift wrapped then placed in a larger gift and that is wrapped and so on.  Then each girl unwraps a layer until the gift is found.  As a variation for my not so understanding crew, I wrapped a set up stickers in as many layers as I had princesses so that they all had something.  This works if you are passing it around in a circle, not by following the DVD game.  If you are only doing the final gift, I would use the DVD version.  With stickers in hand, they jumped back into the bed, and watched another story.  We did the rest of the games and then it was.

TIME FOR BED!  They all had to lie down and sleep.  This only lasts about a minute or two, then I came in with a little bell and rang it calling Princesses  it's Morning Time for all princesses to rise and shine.  We played the Princess music to dance to and it was time to pick up and head for the carriages!   We didn't have time to brush our teeth again to get ready, as moms were already there, but I was going to use that as filler if we were running early.  For those whose parents weren't there, yet, we had a morning book nook where the princess books were in the living room and they could read and share the stories with each other.  This was fun and would be wonderful for older girls too. 

One of my friends, a mom of one of the princesses (well, two), did stay and help out, which was good also since we had a bevy of giggling princesses in my master bed!  We didn't use makeup for the girls, which cut down on mess, but I did put out pretty clips and ribbons and rubber bands for braids.  If I did it again, I would maybe have another DVD since they seemed to want to watch a movie more than the stories and possibly add pink popcorn, but overall I was pretty happy with it and so was my daughter.  I hope someone else can use this!  I have used other party ideas from here in the past.