The Festival of Magic - Magical Themed Party

My son and his best friend since the age of two were both Tinkerbell crazy around their sixth birthdays and as their birthdays are two days apart, her mum Helen and I decided to do a joint party for them and about 35 of their friends. We went for the theme ‘Festival of Magic’ to encompass more than just fairies as they were both into many other magical characters too such as superheroes, witches & wizards, Frozen, unicorns & mermaids. Ideas from this post could also be used for other themes such as Peter Pan, Harry Potter, fairies or Disney.

We wanted to make a ‘festival’ feel to the party with activities available throughout the two hours and a few scheduled activities too.

Here’s a breakdown of what we organised:-

Crafts

The crafts were arranged on tables to work their way around, starting with decorating their party bags and they then put the other crafts they had made into their bags as they worked their way around. In hindsight this didn’t work too well as some little artists spent a long time on their party bags creating a bottleneck at that table. If doing it again I would lay it out so that they could do the crafts in any order or so that they completed them at an allotted time in groups, such as in our Seasons party.

• Decorate your party bag - plain paper bags to decorate with felt tip pens and lots of magical stickers - superheroes, fairies, Disney characters and sparkly shapes
• Create a magical character - select a figure (cardboard cut-out people from the pound shop) and turn them into the character of your choice. Sparkly, coloured and shiny paper and card was pre-cut into items to add to the figures - capes for superheroes, witches and wizards, wings for fairies and pixies, superhero masks and underpants plus magic wands of course. We had googly eyes and sequins to add, glue sticks to attach all of these of course plus lots of felt tip pens!
• Decorate a Magic wand biscuit - I made star shaped biscuits and inserted a wooden coffee stirrer into the biscuit before baking to make it into a magic wand. I iced them before the party with various colours of glace icing. The children had various colours of writing icing to use as ‘glue’ to decorate the wand with sprinkles, sweets, cake toppers and mini marshmallows. Small food bags were provided so they could put the wand in their party bag to take home but I think most wands were eaten before leaving the party!
• Colouring - various colouring sheets provided (superhero and Tinkerbell colouring books cut up into individual sheets) for them to colour at the party or put into their party bag to colour at home

Treasure Hunt

Pictures of various magical creatures were hidden around the party hall, each with a letter on. The children had to write down the letters and work out what they spelt (pixie). When they came to me with the word they got a tiny jar of pixie dust to go in their party bag (these were little jars from The Works, we had to make sure they put them straight in their bags as they were glass but the children were delighted with them!)

Pin The…

We had two big pictures on the wall and the children could choose which one to do to avoid big queues - pin the feather on Peter Pan’s hat or pin the pom pom on Tinkerbell’s slipper. The feathers were a bag of craft feathers from a pound shop and the pom poms were cotton wool balls. A prize to the two children who got the closest with a bonus prize to the child who stuck a pom pom square on Tink’s bottom for unwittingly making us laugh!

Dancing!

My sister helps to run a kids dance class (Zumbatomic, lots of high energy fun!) and kindly offered to teach the children some dance routines. The birthday boy and girl picked some magic-related songs - including ‘Magic Everywhere’ (the Disneyland Paris parade song), ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid and Little Mix’s ‘Black Magic’. Some of the children were too shy to join in which was fine as other activities were available for them to enjoy but the 15-20 children that joined in had great fun shaking pom poms, pretending to be mermaids and making a circle round the birthday duo whilst they did an impromptu routine together!

Party Games

We put a magical twist on some party favourites including ‘what time is it Mary Poppins?’ as opposed to the less magical Mr Wolf, Corners with a magical character to run to in each of the four corners (Elsa, Tinkerbell, Twilight Sparkle and Spider-Man) plus a huge Conga to Selena Gomez’s version of ‘Magic (Oh, It’s Magic)’.

Extra Touches

Guests were invited to come dressed as their favourite magical character - we had a lovely mix of Disney characters, superheroes, fairies and Hogwarts students - the parents even got in the party spirit dressed as Hermione Granger, Mary Poppins, Merlin and Aladdin!

Glitter tattoos - we bought a starter set of everything you need to do glitter tattoos from eBay for a few pounds and chose a template selection with lots of superheroes and fairies included. My husband and my lovely friend Amy found them really easy to do but would recommend a quick practice before the party so you have the technique down in advance! Amy also kindly brought her face paints with her - a quick and easy way to do face paints yourself for a big party is to have a small selection of, for example, superhero logos for the guests to choose from to have on their cheek or arm.



The party table was set up as the Mad Hatters tea party with lots of teapots and teacups with ‘Eat Me’ and ‘Drink Me’ labels attached. We did this as decor but it could be used as a functional part of the party tea - juice served from the teapots, veggie sticks served in teacups, cocktail sausages in sugar bowls etc!

 

Decorations - Helen AKA Mary Poppins made some fab decorations - a signpost with signs to Neverland, Wonderland and Hogwarts, a Frozen mountain using a white net curtain attached to the ceiling and white shredded paper - the kids loved playing in the paper (but be prepared with the sweeping brush afterwards!), Under the Sea area with a ‘mermaid selfie booth’ and a ‘balloon sea’ and a nursery window from a large cardboard box that the guests could crawl through to ‘reach Neverland’

Magical playlist - good background music such as Harry Potter, Star Wars and Tinkerbell soundtracks for guests arriving, nice tea party music such as Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins songs for the party tea and magical dance songs for games and dancing such as Disney and My Little Pony songs, superhero theme tunes and of course any of the birthday child/ren’s favourites.

Cake - I am no cake decorating whizz - they always look soooo much better in my head! - so I have learnt to keep them simple. I bought a personalised Tinkerbell cake topper to go on top of white ready roll icing and then used white and green ready roll icing plus two small bits cut from a red craft feather to make some simple Tinkerbell slippers and Peter Pan hats for the corners of the cake.

Cute toilet signs - for Tinkle-Belles and Whizz-ards!