Strawberry Shortcake Tea -4yr- Sugar Cube Relay

My daughter loves tea parties + strawberry shortcake (SbS), so this year we mixed both:

INVITATION. I cut a tea cup on red cardboard and made some white dots with crayon and coverd them with sparkly glue, we colored a SbS face and we glue it inside the cup, then we made a tea label to glue hanging in the corner of the cup (I use cotton string and glue the label" at the end of the string and we use a strawberry sticker in one side and the other side said: "Please join us!!". Inside we wrote: To a berry special tea party for..and the regular info + a note to come in a party dress.

DECORATION.I bougth some mini real teacups and saucers in a thrift shop for the girls to use we use some big under plates in shinny red that I found the in the dollar store we put a disposable red napking inside the cup.

As a welcome to the table I bought at my local fruit market green cardboard fruit baskets (the kind you find strawberry fruit in the shops) and I braided them with rafia, a handle that we hot glue to make it easy to grab, and put inside a paper crown, a noise maker, and a cookie in the shape of a tea bag ( we dipped the cookie half-way in red chocolate and added sprinkles, and I used the same cotton string and made a label that on one side said: "Happy Birthday" and the other side said "Cupcake" with a candle!).

I used some paper lanterns and flowers on a string (you can find them in a dollar store) and some cut-out of SbS - one big SbS balloon, and lots of flower balloons filled with hellium. For the centerpieces I used 3 cups+saucers stacked on top of each other, and at the top a small tea pot with homemade paper flowers coming out of it . All the colors that we used were red, pink, and lime green. I used pink fabric pieces in the corners of the room and some photos of my daugthers last 3 birthdays on the walls.

ACTIVITIES. I set different stations; for the crafts we made some strawberry fans with the same cardboard from the invitations. I cut a strawberry (fruit) and the girls decorated it with stickers, markers, and sparkly glue and glued a big lollipop stick as a handle.

As they were coming in we had a photo booth where they put on some make-up and clip-on earrings, necklaces, gloves, hats, scarfs and more and I took a photo of each girl that I gave later on to each guest with a homemade card saying thank you for their visit/gift. And the last one was for free play; with food and plastic tea cups/plates/cups/tea pots.

GAMES. I made games that were not competitive - more like the team work type. With some plastic blueberrys strawberrys and merengues from a cake toy of my daugther the girls have to help me "make pay" I set some disposable pay trays in one side of the room with 1 ingredient in it and I give a big spoon to each girl. I mix the berry's in a plastic bowl in the opposite side of the room the girls have to scoop the ingredient and walk with it and put it in the rigth tray.

Then with the same spoons the girls play a "sugar cube relay game" they had to scoop the sugar cubes from 1 container and pass it along to the girl next to them until the last girl deposits the cube in a tea cup on the other side.

Lastly they "pick the strawberries". I bought a plastic bushy plant and hot glued it in a random spot on a small bag of strawberry candies (the kind the wrap look like a real strawberry) and asked the girls to bring their welcome basket from the table so they could pick strawberries like a real farmer. Since this was our last game, I let them choose one wrapped gift for their good job and askd them to open it at home to avoid problems, since I bought different little things. After that we used the same basket to collect the candy/toys from the strawberry pinata that we did after the games.

FOOD. We had finger food to go with our theme: pigs in a blanket (half hot dogs wrap in dough) octopus(half hot dogs wrap in a corn tortilla and deep fried) carrots + cucumbers slices of watermelon merengues cake pops of chocolate cake and chunks of cherries mini croissants with nutella+cream and with ham and chesse, sugar cookies shaped like strawberries and tea pots, marbles of cantaloupe, kiwi and natural strawberries.

The girls had for "tea" juice (banana+berrys and also berrys juice)that I put in the tea pot for each girl and we talk about manners once their were sitting at the table.

CAKE. I made a strawberry shortcake style - It was marble cake from a box and I added natural bananas+ apple sauce for some extra flavor and made some cream chesse frosting with strawberrys and blueberry puree between the layer of cake I put the frosting and slices of natural strawberry and finish in the same way. We put around the cake some mini cupcakes decorated in the same way for each girl to have.

FAVORS. I found some white satin bags with little pink pompons at the top their were fill with StS tattoos couple of the strawberry candies (the same ones for the game) a pencil of StS bubbles a stampetc.  I didn't spend too much money and the girls had a blast - we had 8 girls in total. Hope you find good ideas in this celebration and that your little ones enjoy your party."