Indoor Beach & Under Sea -5yr- Shell Crafts

INDOOR BEACH and UNDER THE SEA PARTY  5 yrs.  This is the plan for my daughter's 5th birthday party which is about two weeks away. I want to give the plan I have it all planned and everything is purchased and I find the planning the fun part as sometimes opposed to the actual party part. Fingers are crossed. It's a boy/girl party with a pretty broad range of ages (4-9) from cousins to neighbors and friends. 

INVITATIONS: I the shape of a tropical floral shirt with the shirt fronts opening to reveal the invite info. I pasted our own message over the date, time, place, blah. Poem: Insert Name is having a Beach Birthday Bash / On Insert Date--So come make a splash! / "Cox" Cove (Insert Address) is the happening place! / Just arrive at Insert Time with a smile on your face. / There’ll be crafts, games, treats and fun under the sea. / It’s sure to be a good time! Please RSVP (Insert #). P.S. There will be no actual H20 involved. 

DECORATIONS: The great thing about having a beach party is having it in the winter and indoors. My daughter is so excited like for this prentend fantasy land. A really large room in our basement is sparsely furnished, so it's perfect for transforming into a beach and under the sea world. Blue streamers will hang at the end of the stairway making the kids enter through a waterfall. Now this part takes some explaining: Where my husband works they use giant rolls of cardstock type colored paper about three feet high. The part they would throw away still has many, many, many feet of paper left in one long continuous roll, enough to wrap around our basement room several times. So, we will wrap the paper rolls around our room using blue for water and tan for sand.

On one half of the room: blue paper to the ceiling for an under the sea area. Also: green streamers for seaweed, then netting and paper fish dangling from the ceiling, and blue baloons filled with helium at the yop of the ceiling. A lamp shade covered will be covered with blue paper with cutouts of wave shapes which will rotate around (thanks to hubby). The lamp’s light will cast moving waves for a very cool effect.

The other half of the room: Sorrounded by shorter blue waves and sand for a beach. Other décor: A palm tree (from Orientnal Trading) and a surf board, sun and sand castle made out of paper, hanging beach balls, and some beach towels. Our picnic table will also be set up for some crafts and for cake and ice cream later.  

CRAFTS: I’ve learned from experience that it is a good idea to have something for the kids to do while waiting for everyone to arrive. So we'll have a craft table to start off the party. First, the kids get to take turns searching for shells in a big galvanized pail full of real sand and colored clamrose seashells, which will then be used to make wind chimes. (All you need is some plastic lids for the top part, yarn/string, glue, sea shells, etc.)

I have some small, clear plastic sand castle bottles which are for sand art, but a bunch of colors of Pixie Stix will work even better I think. The kids can pour in layers of different colors to make the sand castles.  I also have "Color Your Own"  white paper gift bags with fish scenes and some "Color your Own" fish magnets, which will be set out with markers, colored pencils and crayons.  The bags will be labeled then used later for the kids to take home the crafts, prizes and favors collected throughout the party.   

GAMES: The first game will be a guessing game. I have large paper cutouts of different sea creatures. Each kid will get a creature put on their back which they can’t see. The other kids will give them clues and once they guess the creature they get to decide where it should go on the blue waves to completed the decorations and they get a prize--bubble bottle necklaces in the shape of fish creatures.

We will also have a beach ball toss, with mini beach balls. My sand castle decoration is actually designed for this game.  The balls are tossed into the sand castle, the center of which is a paper "tube" that is tall and small and, therefore, the "bullyseye". More of these "rings" are continued around the outside and get progressively larger and shorter. They have nothces in the top to look like a castle and arched out doorways at the bottom for the balls to come out.

Anyway, there is a mini beach ball for each child and whoever makes it into the center gets to keep the ball. Of course they will all get to keep a ball in the end, but that is the idea. Another game will be like muscail chairs only with Beach Towels spread around the room and the music of the Beach Boys. I have some stickers and stamps for prizes. The last game we will play at the end after cake and presents, but it will be just your basic carnival "fish pond". We will set up an area for the kids to cast a fishing pole and each kid gets a box in the shape of a fish filled with Sweedish fish. I purchased almost EVERYTHING from Oriental Trading (except like some streamers and napkins and utensils, though they have those too.) 

FOOD/CAKE: We won’t do a meal, but during craft time we will set out goldfish crackers and other crackers and some parasol umbrella toothpicks with cheese and fruits and veggies.  Am having a sand castle cake made (my cousin does wedding cakes and very cool birthday cakes) but the kids will get cake served in miniature sand pails which come with matching rakes and shovels. (Which they can use to eat or not.) This cake is one you do in layers with cake chuncks, pudding, whipped cream, and candy or sprinkles, either in chocolate or vanilla flavor. We want to save the castle cake for a family dinner later on with grandmas, etc. (Plus, kids seem to enjoy eating out of or with something not ordinary, hence the sand pails.)   

FAVORS: Each kid will end up with the bag they colored filled with their wind chime, fish mangnent, stickers, stamp, bubbles, Pixie Stix filled sand castle, mini beach ball, fish box w/ Swedish fish, and the sand pail w/shovel and rake. EVERYTHING, and I mean everthing, is also color coordinated and goes well together from the décor to the seashells to the balls, to the pails, etc. The colors are bright pink, purple, blue, green, yellow and orange.