Theme Party Thursday: Construction Party

Note: You could easily incorporate Bob the Builder or Handy Manny into the party too. I never did this party with my kids, but I helped my friend come up with this for her twin boys 3rd birthday. They didn't have "Handy Manny" back then, so here were the ideas I came up for her. She wanted a construction theme because the boys wanted to be "just like daddy" who "builds stuff".
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Invites: There is so much cute clip art or stickers/embellishments out there with barricades, dump trucks, tools, etc.

Dump Everything And Come!

(Child's Name)'s birthday is under construction.

work begins: (date)

groundbreaking: (start time)

quittin' time (end time)

construction site: (address)

Regrets Only, (ph #)

Project Manager: (parent's name)

Games/Activities
Boulder Toss Ball up several pairs of grey socks. These are the Boulders. Then let the kids take turns trying to toss the boulders into a large toy dump truck or yellow bin.

Tower Building Set out big building blocks or empty shoe boxes and see how high they can "build" a tower by stacking the boxes before the tower falls down.

Build the House Use a large empty appliance box, like for a refrigerator or washing machine. Cut out windows and doors, and paint it to resemble a little house. At the party, set the "house" up in a corner along with a few plastic toy tools. Let the kids pretend to build the house by hammering away, etc.

Road Blocks Have an obstacle course set up. Tell them it's the road to their prizes, but on the way, there are road blocks. When we did this we set up about 4 orange cones that they had to walk around. Next was an "overpass" which was one of those water noodles laid across 2 kitchen chairs. The kids had to crawl under that. Finally some fallen boulders (bean bag chairs) were in the middle of the road, and the kids had to crawl over those. At the end of the obstacle course, they received their goody bags, which were brown lunch sacks with treats.

Decorations Use things like Caution tape in place of streamers. For easy table covers, use black plastic table cloths or black garbage bags. Use strips of yellow tape down the middle of each table to resemble roads.

Food: If you can find some old lunch boxes, open them and set them out to use as serving trays. Fill them with sandwiches or fruit snacks, etc. Can serve chips out of toy dump trucks (just wash them first!).

Party Favors: The best party favor idea for this is to purchase the plastic yellow construction hats for about $.30-$1.00 a piece. Check your local party stores, or even target or walmart dress up section in the toy aisle. (We got them $.30 each off eBay). Use a permanent black marker to write each guest's name on the front. They will love it.