My daughter wants a princess party for her 4th birthday. I have a few ideas but am trying to come up with great ways to include the boys (we have a few close relatives with young boys). I have a few ideas like decorating crowns/tiaras and decorating fancy cups for both boys and girls. What I am really stuck about is the party favors. I try to do items that are themed towards the party's theme (like last year she had Little Einsteins so they received a microphone, musical instruments, and art supplies) and can find lots of things for girls but not for boys. I would like to get mostly the same stuff for all the goody bags but if not, I need ideas for some boy items to include. I don't like to just throw in junk or lots of candy.
BTW...I really don't want to mix themes (knights) but am fine w/ Princess & Prince items or related.
Still working on this..I have plenty of time. Thanks for all the ideas, please keep them coming. Just FYI... I am really going for the "royal party" side of this theme and have the activities like the crowns and decorating the goblets (which they will drink from) covered. I am looking for smaller items to go in the party favor bags.
hmmmm... coed gift bag ideas... maybe you could find some sort of bubble wand that looks "royal" (like a scepter -- we were once given a long, skinny tube of bubble juice with a long "dipper" -- it could be moved through the air to make bubbles instead of blown into) Or maybe a deck of cards (cards have kings and queens on them...) or some sort of herald-like flag that they could wave or trumpet they could blow?
Some possible ideas for boy favors include prince-themed or knight-themed gifts such as books or dvd's about princes, knights and dragons, etc. The Prince and the Pauper is available in a children's version. Also, there are a few Disney movies with princes as their main characters: Aladdin and The Sword in the Stone. There are many items featuring Aladdin (books, coloring books, dvd's, action figures, toys). Hope this helps! Have a great party!
Yes, I am considering the same theme! A friend told me she used the tiara/crown idea plus got foam swords (very knight-ish) for the boys and wands for the girls. I would look on Oriental Trading Co. or even someplace like Michael's. Good luck!
Saw foam swords in the dollar section of Target yesterday.
We had a dress up princess party for my grand daughters 3rd or 4th birthday too. We had it at the park and I bought the crown foam kids from Hobby Lobby. I provided the glue, the glitter, the kits, the markers, etc...and laid them out on the table for each child to make their own foam crown, it cost less than $10 for all the kits and extras, some I did have on hand though.
I have over 10 years in child care and know how important dress up is so I have lots of old Halloween costumes, fancy dresses from thrift stores, princess shoes, etc...and I took tubs full to the park, each girl was encouraged to bring their own dress up stuff too. I took yards of cloth for the boys to make capes out of and several pairs of scissors to cut it with. we used old brooches, big pins,etc...to hold them together at the throat. The boys basically had capes and crowns to be kings. They could have made some scepters out of downed tree limbs too but we only had a few boys.
My 20 month old grandson had a lime green one piece outfit (I made it off Simplicity pattern 3663) that he was going to wear for Halloween and be a parrot, we made a different hat and put frog eyes on it and put a little plastic bracelet on it and he was a frog prince...it was so very cute.
At 3 years old the boys will use their imagination a lot and be able to improvise their own costumes with just a few basic supplies.
We had a castle cake I made with a kit from Hobby Lobby that was very easy to decorate. I don't do party favors, they get cake and stuff and the crafts they made.
Laminated bag tags/luggage tags/name tags... which is always useful.... to tag/label kids bags. It comes in real handy and is a good goody bag item. Moms, appreciate it. I did when we would get those from parties my daughter attended.
www.birthdayinabox.com has real cute ones, and great party favors, and is good quality etc. My friend, gets all her kids party things from this website. They have MANY different themes... real cute.
And Personalized. The 'bag tags' are not expensive either. I STILL have my daughter's that she got from her friends parties. REAL useful.
all the best,
Susan
L.:
You sound like me - I don't like putting junk in my goodie bags either. However, I don't think making the boys knights is mixing themes.
As a Knight - they could get goblets, swords and a chest plate. They could "rescue" the princess!
As a Prince - they would get a crown and a fancy vest.
Which do you think they would like better?
The boys can be Knights with balloon swords..
crayons and coloring books, maybe even with an inexpensive tote bag (like the solid color ones that are often in the Target dollar bins) they could decorate with foamy stickers as one of the activities
