Rhapsody of Cacophony: Teddy Bear Picnic Part 2

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Teddy Bear Picnic Part 2

On Monday I showed you all the decor and food for the Teddy Bear's Picnic (if you missed it, click here), but we all know, the real fun is in the activities we did! Which is what today's post is all about.

"station" sign

We took parts from the story/song to name various stations of things we did. The first thing the story says is that if you go into the woods today you better go in disguise. So, we had each of the kids make felt bear ears (glued to pins that they could pin onto an elastic style headband).

I didn't get pictures of any of the kids wearing them at the party because the glitter glue was busy drying... So Mady posed with hers the next day.

They also made honey-comb necklaces. Adalya loved eating hers. Ha!

We also had some bear colouring pages on hand for those that finished their disguises early. These activities worked well as we waited for the rest of the guests to arrive.

Next we all sat down and I read the kids the actual Teddy Bear's Picnic story.

Then, since we know that bears like to play hide and seek ("beneath the trees where nobody sees, they'll hide and seek as long as they please") we sent the kids to find the bears. Well, at least their paw prints. We gave each child a basket with a mini paper paw on it and they had to find all the matching ones. (on the back of the mini one that they were using as their "guide" I wrote the child's name and how many they had to find).

To make it a bit more fair with the varying ages of kids we had them find double whatever their age was (those under the age of 1 just had to find 1 and the 10 year old had to find 20!). It worked pretty good.

When they found all their paws they brought them to me and they got a book as a prize. The babies I gave a bear board book to and the older kids (except the 10 year old since they would be a little below her) all got a Berenstain bears book.

After the hunt we ate food ("There's lots of wonderful food to eat") which you can read about here.

And then we went and played parachute games ("and wonderful games to play"). My sister planned them all and Goober (Mady's bear) got to do all sorts of fun things from playing in the "rain" to being tossed in the air, going on a carousal ride and being "rocked" to sleep. I think Mady enjoyed it the most since it was her bear. Haha!

We made a "ball pit" for the babies to play in.

Uh oh, she noticed Mom.

After the parachute we had cake. Here are the girls getting their cupcakes. Kate did much better eating her cake than Mady did 2 years ago. I think she finished half of it!

Next we pulled apart the (bee hive) piñata. Each kid got a ribbon to hold and on the count of three they pulled and opened it up. Inside were bags for each kid of gummy bears and jujube bears (We didn't do a mad scramble since we had a variety of ages from 0-10 and didn't think it would be very fair for the little ones.

"Every bear that's ever been good is sure of a treat today" so for treat bags the kids brought me their baskets and they got another baggie of teddy grahams, a chocolate teddy bear lollipop that I made and a honey stick (pink lemonade or root beer flavoured).