Butterfly Party - 2 years

We chose to have a butterfly party for our daughter because that was the theme of her bedroom at the time, and this made decorating much easier. The handwritten invites said: Beautiful Butterfly, flying so free, please come to E's 2nd birthday tea. We're sure to have such splendid fun, we'd really love for you to come! So flutter on by on July 8 - Arrive at 3 - you won't be late. Choose ONE colour you'd like to wear and sprinkle glitter in your hair. All the details are below. If you can come, please let us know! The venue was called The Butterfly Farm with our address, and the RSVP was to the Mom-arch Butterfly. My daughters helped me make a HUGE cardboard

butterfly for our front door, covered in a collage of sparkly birthday confetti. I found a sheet of wrapping paper covered in hundreds of different types of butterflies. I cut these out and stuck them onto fruit-flavoured sweets that were hidden all over the garden for the treasure hunt. I made small

bags of coloured pop-corn, pinched and tied in the middle with a pipe-cleaner to form the body and antennae of a butterfly. These were suspended from a tree and looked like a swarm of butterflies hovering over the garden. Each child got a packet to take home. The first activity was to colour simple butterfly pictures to take home. When the colouring was done, each child got a sprinkling of sparkly butterfly stickers on their cheeks and hands. They were very proud of these!

Then it was off to find as many butterfly sweets hidden in the garden as they could. When they were done, the kids were rewarded with their very own butterfly antenna (alice bands with pipe-cleaner feelers). Then it was time for an interactive story. I took a large appliance box, painted it white and created a canvas for a story on it. The story started with a big tree on one side, and I proceeded to tell an adapted version of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. As the story went, the box showed pictures of different things that the caterpillar ate on his way around the garden. Each picture had a special little door that opened to reveal a sweet, a block of cheese,

a lolly pop - anything edible I could attach in the space behind the door. The kids each took turns to open a door and retrieve the treat behind it. The story ended with the caterpillar turning into a butterfly, at which point, from inside the box, we brought out a pair of butterfly wings for each little guest - they had turned into butterflies too! We ended off with a simple yet very effective looking butterfly birthday cake, made from a double layered, round sponge cake and decorated with bright sweets and icing.

Jessica - DURBANVILLE