Sock Monkey Party

Two years ago my daughter was REALLY into monkeys.  We decided to do a sock monkey party (she still loves sock monkeys two years later).  This party was probably the most labor intensive party I have ever done.  I made 14 sock monkeys before the party.  The sewing is not that bad, it is stuffing all of those arms, legs and tails and then hand sewing them to the body.  The faces take a bit of time also.  I purchased the socks when I found them.  Her birthday is in the spring so Kohls had their knee socks on sale.  This would need to be started a couple of months in advance or 3-4 days of all day sewing.  When we got closer to the party I had my mom and older daughter helping me finish up!  This is the picture we used to make the invitations to the party.  I just went to CVS or Walmart and did one of the picture invitations.

When I completed each monkey then I gave each one a personality.  I wrote on a piece of paper a little something about each monkey.  An example would be (my name is bananas and I love swimming, knitting and eating banana splits.  My best friend is Ethel).  I then used string to tie each of the little personalities to the monkeys. Here is the important part:  Every friend must have a friend so if you use banana and Ethel from the example, then you need to have one monkey named Ethel that says her best friend is banana.  Does that make sense?  I thought I had this all down and even double checked but we still had one error that was fixable.  More on that is just a bit.

 I wish I had taken a picture of this but in all the confusion I didn't.  I got a HUGE basket and piled all the sock monkeys in there.  They looked cute with all of the arms and tails etc hanging out of them.

While I was getting the basket ready I put my older daughter in charge of helping them play pin the tail on the monkey.  I ended up just making this myself.  I used felt and found a picture of a cute monkey and free handed it onto the felt.  Then added the clothes and made a bunch of tails.

Each child then got to pick out their own sock monkey from the basket.  Reagan had picked hers out in advance and it was set to the side.  This admittedly was a bit crazy!  I don't know if it is better to hand out the monkeys or let everyone pick their own.  We did not have any arguments  but I can see that could possibly be a problem since no two were alike.

Once everyone got their monkey then they read the tags and had to find their monkeys best friend.  Here was my error!  I had one monkey who said her best friends name but then no other monkey with that name...ackkkkk!  We fixed it by having one group have friends of three!  You could also do this if you had an odd number of kids.  When all the kids found their monkey friends we then took pics of them together.

We then let them hang out and talk about their monkeys with each other for a bit and then it was on to the next part.   Dressing our monkeys!  I made each monkey a pillow case dress.  Just two rectangles to fit the monkey, looped over a piece at the top to thread some ribbon through and tied.  Very basic!  I also expected a couple of boys at the party and my grandmother came up with a little tie that had elastic threaded through it!  I wish we had made more of these!  Everyone wanted one.... who would have ever guessed.  Each outfit was put into a ziploc baggie and laid out on the table.  A dress for each girl and a tie and hat for the boys.  Then they dressed their monkeys and we took pics.  They had a great time with this

Once again we had no gift bags.  Everyone took home their monkey and its clothes.  My daughter STILL has this monkey.  It has gone with us to doctors appointments, vacations and even just running errands.  It has had many repairs and re-stuffings but it is well worth it!!!

Puppet Party

Birthday parties are a pretty big deal around here.  The planning starts a couple of months in advance.  We LOVE birthday parties.  This is a party my daughter had a few years back.  We had just completed a unit study on puppets and she was really enjoying them so we decided to have a puppet party.  One of the girls in our co-op had made a puppet theater for and let us use it for the party.  It is made from a cardboard box, wrapping paper to decorate and some material for curtains.

When the guests arrived we had the table full of craft supplies for them to make their own puppets.  We had socks, yarn, ping pong balls cut in half for eyes, wiggly eyes, red circles cut in half for the insides of the mouths etc.  Each child spent some time make their own sock puppet.  

We then had each child make a string puppet.  This was very easy and only involved basic supplies.  I used this video to teach myself and then taught the kids at the party!

Then the real fun began!  They all created puppet shows for everyone at the party.  This took up most of the rest of the party time.  We ended up only having time for one game.  Everyone was having so much fun that I just let them have at it.

The game we squeezed in was puppet themed also.  I got enough tennis balls for everyone to have one and cut a slit in the ball.  This became the "mouth" and I had each child use sharpie markers to decorate the rest of the tennis ball to look like a face or whatever they wanted with a mouth.  We then dropped candy(  you will have to use mini candy bars or other small pieces of candy to make it easier to pick up) on the floor and had then go around picking it up with their little characters mouth by squeezing the ball to open the "mouth" and then releasing the pressure at the right time to keep the candy inside.  They each had a bag to dump the candy out of the ball when it got to full.

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry, but you get the general idea.   We just barely squeezed in enough time to eat some ice cream sundaes!

We didn't have to do gift bags because everyone took home the sock, string and tennis ball puppets they made plus the candy from the game.  I had several of the parents call me the next day and tell me their kids were still playing with the puppets.  This was definitely a fun party!