Winter Wonderland -5yr- Ice Fishing Game

My daughter's birthday is Dec. 27th so this year we decided to do a winter wonderland party.  I had it the weekend after new year's just to get away from Christmas a little bit and have some time to get organized.  We had 10 kids come and held it in our finished basement. 

For the invitations I printed them from my computer on quarter fold card stock.  There were pretty colored clip art snowflakes on the front and it said you're invited".  I also used some white glitter glue around the snowflakes to make it look shimmery.  The inside of the invitation just gave the basic info about the party.  I allotted an hour and 1/2 for the party. 

I decorated the party room with light blue and white.  I found a "scene setter icicle boarder" at the party store for half price so I hung that all around the room. It looked like there were icy blue icicles hanging down the wall from the ceiling.  There were blue and white twisted streamers on the ceiling and hanging down two pillars in the room.  I bought a dozen blue and white helium balloons and 3 Mylar snowflake balloons from a party store.  The big huge snowflake balloon I tied to the birthday girl's chair and I tied a white or blue balloon to each child's chair.  I also put some balloons outside for the guests arriving to see.  In one part of the room I hung white glittery snowflake ornaments from the ceiling.  I also decorated a couple of walls with snowflakes I fashioned myself from snowflake wire garland.  I had two tables set up and put snowflake tablecloths down first and then put another plain white and blue tablecloth over the snowflake ones.  We were doing a craft first and then when that was done I just removed the top table cloth and then had the snowflake ones laid out with things we would need for cake later. 

When the kids first arrived I had them start the craft.  We made snow globes.  I gave each child an 8oz water bottle. (Poland Springs has this funky new water bottle out called Aquapod.  The bottle is really fat and round and the label slips right off and is nice and smooth underneath it was PERFECT!  Each child had about 13 pieces of snowflake confetti (hard to find but I finally found some snowflakes mixed in with red candy canes so I just took out the snowflakes--at least it was 50% off after Christmas!)  I also put out small bowls of blue silver and white glitter and had small spoons for them to use.  When the child opened there water bottle to start I added just a couple of drops of glycerin to the water to thicken it up.  When they had added their glitter we put the tops back on tight and after shaking them a bit I put their initials on the caps and put them on a table for them to take home when they left. 

As kids were finishing the craft they had some free play until everyone was done.  I had some toys out in the room but also had a Rubbermaid container filled with "snowballs" or white balloons for the kids to play with.  This was a big hit--they enjoyed hitting the balloons up in the air or batting it back and forth with each other. 

When everyone was done with the craft we played "ice fishing".  I covered a big white bucket with white poster board and cut a hole in the middle.  I made about 12 fish out of colored poster board and put a paperclip on the end of its nose.  I had two magnetic fishing rods one I already had from a fishing puzzle the other I made with a wooden dowel with a shoelace tied to it and a magnet with a hole in the middle to that.  I put a snowflake stamp on each fish and told them that whoever caught a fish with a stamp on it gets to pick a prize out of the prize box.  Of course every fish had a stamp so they all got to pick a prize.  I filled my daughter's small dress up trunk with various prizes for boys and girls such as pencils hair elastics paddle balls etc.  I would have liked to have had more snowflake themed prizes but I waited too long to order from Oriental Trading and the stores had already moved into Valentine's Day.  The kids enjoyed the fishing game. 

Then we played "snowman bowling".  I made 6 snowmen out of white poster board.  My daughter decorated the snowmen and then I glued them to empty 2-liter soda bottles.  I taped a line down on the rug for the kids to stand behind and used a white sock filled with tissue paper as the bowling ball.  The kids really enjoyed trying to knock down all 6 snowmen and they got 2 tries per turn.  We did a few rounds of this.  The next game we played was called "snowball throw".  I had crumpled up a bunch of white tissue paper to make snowballs.  I divided the kids into two teams and they stood on either side of the line I had taped to the rug.  They all grabbed some snowballs and when I said go they had to throw their snowballs over the line into the other teams side.  I set a timer for 1 minute and when the timer went off they had to stop throwing and whichever side had the fewest snowballs on their side won. 

We played one more game of "melting snowball" which was my version of hot potato.  I used the same filled sock from the snowman bowling game as the snowball.  I used the song "Frosty the Snowman" for the music as we played.  I told them whoever was left holding the snowball was out but don't worry because that meant they got to go visit the prize box again. 

After that it was time for cake.  I made a snowman cake using one 8" round pan for the head and a 9" round pan for body.  I made a yellow cake and frosted it with fluffy white frosting.  I used two black gum drops for the eyes a candy corn for the nose and chocolate chips for the mouth.  We used different colored gum drops for the buttons and black licorice for the arms.  I also made "frozen snowballs" which was two small scoops of vanilla ice cream and I put out colored sprinkles and chocolate chips for them to decorate them with.  I scooped out the ice cream into paper snowflake bowls a head of time and wrapped them and put them in the freezer so they would be ready to go. 

After everyone was done eating we did a piñata.  The most wintery piñata I could find was a "Happy Feet" penguin which I think was perfect because it was cute and wasn't too big and had pull strings which is what I wanted.  Before we pulled the piñata strings I wanted to give them their goody bags to put their loot in.  To make it a little more fun I bought light blue paper party bags and then went on the computer and found 10 different clip art pictures of snowflakes.  I printed 2 of each snowflake I found.  I cut out one snowflake from the pair and taped it to the party bags.  The other snowflake from the pair went into a little bag.  I told the kids to pick a snowflake out of the bag and then go find the matching snowflake on a goody bag and that would be their goody bag.  After all the kids found their bag we pulled the piñata strings. 

After that we had about 10 minutes left so my daughter opened her presents.  It was a fun party for the kids and the few parents who stayed said it was really nice.

The only strange thing about my winter party was that in January in the North East it was 70 degrees that day!!"