Bird Birthday Party -6yr- Bird Bingo

For my daughter's sixth birthday she decided to have a bird birthday party. She loves birds and we went to work coming up with ideas for the original party theme. She drew her favorite bird picture and we scanned it into her invitation. The inside of the card read,Fly on over to ___'s Sixth Birthday Nesting Date___ Incubation Time___ Habitat: Our  Backyard Egg can't Hatch? xxx-xxxx.

We decorated our front yard with whirly birds (the wind catchers that spin like crazy....dug them out of a discount store) and taped bird tracks on the sidewalk and up the steps to our Habitat. On the front porch we taped streamers from the ceiling to the floor to look like vines and  had a huge mylar balloon of a macaw.

When our guests arrived we gave them a bag to hold all of their bird gear.  We like to have a quick and easy activity as we wait for all the kids to arrive. So we pre-assembled toilet-tube binoculars and covered them with paper and let the kids personalize their binoculars. We also had bird gliders from OT for them to assemble for a later game.

After everyone arrived we had landing practice. We took the bird gliders and played a game trying to land their bird in a hula hoop nest.(didn't want to stop that game)

Next we had to find a mother bird's lost eggs. We hid 50 or 60 plastic eggs in our backyard and had the kids go searching for all of mother bird's lost eggs. ( the eggs were of course filled with candy!!) After we rescued all the eggs each bird watcher received a bird whistle for great observation.

Next we needed to  go looking for the mother birds. We divided the group and half of the kids went bird watching and the other half played bird bingo. We created bird bingo online.

To take the kids bird watching we stacked the deck and used stuffed birds from the Audubon Society and taped them by the bird feeder bird bath on the fence and other places birds might hang out.  We had each bird watcher grab their binoculars field guide and a pencil.  (we made a mini-field guide to identify each bird they spotted. We printed pictures and brief description of the bird and taped them to a small notebook)

After each group found all the birds in their guide. We had the kids dress up as bird for the next game. The dress up consisted of "marabou-style" scarves and homemade feather masks. We played a game of musical nests. Love this game because no one is out. Use 4 hulahoops and play music with your "birds" flying from nest to nest. When the music stops each child needs to land in a hulahoop nest. We keep removing nests until all the kids are trying to cram into one. (Hilarious!) We rewarded our birds with packets of gummy worms.

Next we went to the Birdfeeder. Or had our cake. We served sunflower seeds gummy worms gold fish jello-jigglers in the shape of birds chocolate strawberries and bird house shaped cake. Then let the bird-day girl open presents and shooed all the birds outside to have real flying practice going down our zipline. Fun day for our bird-day girl and her backyard friends."