Bring the circus into your home with a circus theme party.
Circus-themed parties are an enjoyable and simple way to celebrate a child's birthday. Recreate the color and excitement of the circus and carnival in your home or party venue with easy, affordable decorations and activities to keep the kids happy and busy.
Invitations
Start off by creating themed invitations. Purchase circus- or carnival-themed invitations, print them from kids crafts sites such as DLTK-Kids.com, or make your own on the computer and invite everyone to "The Greatest Show on Earth! One Day Only Event!" Be sure to stick an "admit one" ticket in the envelope, along with some star confetti or circus stickers. You can find printable circus tickets online from kids activities sites or cut your own out of card stock from the craft store.
Decorations
Create a big top atmosphere with red, yellow and blue latex balloons, crepe paper streamers and disposable plates, cups and other tableware from the dollar store. Add two or three more expensive foil balloons with a circus theme if you wish. Create your own big top tent by setting up the cake table under a hanging light fixture, plant hook or something else handy and hanging streamers from it in alternate colors to look like stripes. Spread the streamers out at the bottom around the far end of the table to create a tent effect. Alternatively, hang up a trapezes over the table made out of paper towel rolls and streamers. Attach a little monkey with velcro paws to be your trapeze artist. Place appropriate stuffed animals -- tigers and elephants -- all around. You can also use them as balloon weights and attach helium balloons to create a table centerpieces.
Circus Treats
Serve up circus-style birthday treats that the kids will love. Get some red-and-white striped plastic popcorn buckets made to look like paper popcorn bags from the dollar store and fill them up with regular popcorn, candy popcorn and caramel popcorn. If you think the kids can handle the sugar, have bags or buckets of pink and blue cotton candy on hand as well. You can find cotton candy at specialty candy stores or online. Alternatively, serve cupcakes in the themed colors or decorated to look like lion, tiger, elephant, monkey and clown faces, or even circus tent tops and or bags of popcorn. Check the sites or blogs of custom bakeries like Once Upon A Cupcake to get ideas. For lunch or dinner, serve hot dogs and nachos. Make your own concession-style trays using old gift or shoe boxes. Decorate the outside, line with paper towels or place mats, and wrap hot dogs in colorful napkins, small paper plates or paper doilies to serve.
Activities
To get out all of that sugar energy, hold lots of active games in keeping with the carnival spirit. Enlist helpers to assist the kids in games like ring toss, bean bag toss, water balloon toss and relay races. Set up a few game stations decorated with streamers and hand out out carnival-style prizes for guests to take home. You can save on cost by purchasing an assortment bag of small prizes from the dollar store. Get ideas for kids carnival games from activities sites like Fun Attic.com and carnival sites like School Carnivals.com. Mom or Dad can dress up as a clown and give the kids clown faces with a face painting kit or like a fortune teller and tell fortunes with a crystal ball from the novelty store.
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