Kids love ice cream, making it the perfect theme for a birthday party.
Although ice cream may seem like more of a party food than a party theme, hosting an ice cream-themed party just requires a little creativity. Creating items that look like ice cream is easy because you should have plenty of round things that you can turn into scoops of ice cream. Does this Spark an idea?
Invitations
Start off an ice cream party with an invitation featuring an ice cream sundae collage with all the party information. For each invitation, cut a bowl shape from white paper and cut four circles of paper in different colors to act as the scoops of ice cream. Glue the bowl and four ice cream balls onto a black card. Write "Here's the Scoop" in metallic silver marker at the top of the card and write all the party details inside the ice cream balls. One should contain the birthday child's name and age, another has the time and date, the third has the party location and the fourth has RSVP information.
Decorations
Inflate balloons with helium and cut large triangles of light brown paper to act as the ice cream cones. Roll the triangle into cone shapes and tape one to the bottom of each balloon. Decorate with a polka-dot tablecloth and streamers in coordinating colors. Create a colorful ice cream buffet table with a variety of ice cream toppings in small clay pots, which look like ice cream cones.
Activities
Have an ice cream relay race by dividing kids into teams and giving each team an ice cream cone and a tennis ball or other ball that fits in the cone but requires some effort to keep from falling out. On each child's turn, he must walk or run with the ice cream cone and tennis ball to a spot in the yard and return to his team. He cannot touch the ball while it is on the cone, and if it falls off, he has to pick it up and take three paces backward before setting it back on the cone and continuing. As another activity, have kids play "Pin the cherry on the sundae," which works like "Pin the tail on the donkey" except that they have round circles that they are trying to get on the top scoop of a picture of an ice cream sundae.
Food
An ice cream party obviously needs to have ice cream, but a special way to do this is to make homemade ice cream in a bag. According to Disney Family Fun, kids can make individual servings of ice cream with a soft-serve consistency in just five minutes. Give each child a sandwich-size zippered bag containing 1 cup of half and half, 2 tablespoons sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Then have each child put his small bag in a gallon-size zippered bag half-full of ice with 1/2 cup of rock salt mixed in. Have the kids massage the bags for about five minutes, or until the ice cream in the inner bag has hardened. Set up a variety of ice cream toppings for kids to pour into their inner bags and hand out spoons so kids can eat the sundaes right out of the bags.
Tags: each child, cone tennis, cone tennis ball, cream balls, cream cone