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PrintThe Artful Kids’ Party
Add Some Color to Your Next Celebration
There is a budding Rembrandt or Picasso in just about every child, so what better way to celebrate their birthday than holding an Art Party? Here are some steps to get you started:
Invitations
There are several fun ways to invite guests to your Art Party:
- Use a basic coloring book and copy one of the designs onto heavy cardstock. Attach a crayon and encourage the guests to color the picture and bring it to the party to display. Party details can go on the back.
- Another option entails copying one of your child’s recent drawings onto postcards and put the party details on the back.
- Or if these don’t grab you, simply attach an invitation to a box of crayons or a paint set.
Decorations
Decorating for your art party can be as simple as using balloons in crayon colors, or you can use some of these colorful ideas:
- Make a mini art gallery by setting up easels to display your child’s artwork. Add to the gallery feel by naming each “Masterpiece” after a famous painting! Place a large piece of white butcher paper on a wall and supply markers and crayons. As guests arrive, keep them entertained by asking them to help create a birthday mural.
- Set out plastic artist’s palettes with colorful candies such as M&Ms, JellyBellys or Skittles and use balloons in coordinating colors.
- String mops make excellent giant paintbrushes, and you can purchase giant Crayola banks to set around the room.
- Create centerpieces out of empty paint cans filled with art supplies like paintbrushes, markers and crayons. Depending on the size of your party, these centerpieces can be taken home as favors by your guests.
Activities
When all the guests have arrived, a great first activity is to let the children create their very own party T-shirts. Purchase inexpensive white t-shirts (Goodwill is a great resource for this) and create a station where the kids can customize their own. Provide fabric paint and let the kids go to town decorating their “party shirt.”
Have art stations set up around the room with various craft projects. The stations can be as elaborate or simple as you wish. Kids love to create, so you can set up stations with paint, crayons, scissors, glue, felt shapes, foam pieces, rubber stamps, construction paper and clay. Use your child’s age and interests as a guide. Have a teenage or adult “helper” at each station to lend a hand where needed, but for the most part, let the kids create their own masterpieces.
Display copies of paintings by famous artists and let the kids try to copy them.
For an older group of kids, color copy a famous painting, then divide the painting into multiple squares and number them. Cut out an equal number of squares from art paper, but make the blank squares much larger than the divided squares. Give each birthday party guest a smaller piece of the colorful painting and a larger blank square. Write the number on the back of the larger square and then ask them to re-create the smaller square onto the larger square using any media they want. Let them choose from pastels, pencils, paints or even a collage made from magazine pieces. At the end of the party, assemble the painting and see how close they came to the original masterpiece.
FOOD
To make sure there are no “starving artists” at your party, you can make food a part of the party.
- Give each child a cupcake frosted in plain, white icing. Let them decorate their own cupcake with brightly colored frostings, using toothpicks and small paintbrushes.
- Make a cake that looks like a painting, creating a frame around the edges. If you have a small number of guests, let them decorate inside the frame before cutting the cake.
- Make a cake that looks like an artist’s palette or a big crayon.
- Let the kids "decorate" their own mini pizza (provide cheese, olives, mushrooms, pineapple and other topping favorites).
- Set up a sundae bar and let the kids create their own sundaes.
- Provide plain sugar cookies along with frosting and colorful toppings and let the kids decorate their own cookies.
A child’s imagination and creativity is always worth celebrating, and with these art party ideas, any budding artist will have a party they’ll never forget. How PERFECT is that?
