Teddy Bear Picnic -3yr- Decorate Your Bear

Teddy Bear Picnic - 3rd Birthday Party. 

For our daughter, Kendall's, third birthday (Sept'01) we wanted to have a party that wasn't too commercial and would be entertaining for both kids (ages 20 months to 5 yrs old) and adults.  Because of normally poor weather conditions in the fall months, we decided to bring the picnic indoors and hosted the party in our home.  We mailed teddy bear party invitations to the kids with the request that they bring along their favorite bear as well as their moms/dads. 

We decorated the house with all of Kendall's teddy bears (31 at last count), about 25 teddy bear/animal balloons and Winnie the Pooh helium balloons, streamers (red, purple, yellow & blue) and red plastic gingham tablecloths - it was very colorful.

For a welcome activity we cut construction paper into large bear shapes and gave the kids glue sticks, colored feathers, pompom balls, glitter balls & foam shapes to decorate the bears - with some help from parents, they pasted colored Popsicle sticks onto the bears to make puppets. This was a great way to let the kids (and adults) play as other children arrived.

My very talented sister-in-law, designed a large, wall sized teddy bear with coordinating honey pot for a game of pin the honey pot on the bear - the kids loved this variation on the old party game.

Although time did not permit it, I had planned to read "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" really nicely illustrated by Alexandra Day.

For lunch we served teddy bear sandwiches (we cut out bread slices into teddy bear shapes using a cookie cutter) with egg salad, ham, cheese & pb&j fillings.  We also served munchies (pretzels, chips, cheezies, cheese sticks etc) in a large picnic basket and had an assortment of salads (chicken salad, veggie platter, tabboulah) for both kids & adults. 

For the kids we served juice boxes and adults had choice of punch or coffee/tea. Although it was a buffet arrangement, we had picnic place settings for all 8 kids at our kitchen table.

To stick with the "picnic" theme we used colored (red, purple & yellow) plastic plates and Winnie the Pooh paper napkins.

For dessert we had a bakery carrot cake with teddy bear/balloons/gift design in cream cheese icing.  The kid's goodie bags were individualized based on their age/sex - all got Winnie the Pooh straws (we bought them on a recent trip to Disney World), bear stickers, gummy bears & Pooh honey pot chocolates.

The girls also received Pooh hair clips, the younger kids got Pooh balls and the older boys bug catchers/magnifiers. 

The party proved to be a great hit with both the kids & their parents - for us the appeal was in easy preparation (all the food was made the day before) and very easy clean up. My only regret was that it was surprisingly difficult to find non-licensed teddy bear stuff (e.g. invitations, paper napkins, balloons, grab bags etc)and we ended up using an assortment of licensed (e.g. Little Bear, Pooh) items in keeping with the bear theme.