Valerie has a question for the party lovers among us:
I was thinking of doing a Dr. Seuss themed birthday party for my twins who will be turning 3. My initial idea is a "Green Eggs and Ham" brunch for a small group of children and their parents. I was going to serve either deviled eggs with green tinted filling or green tinted scrambled eggs, biscuits and ham, fresh fruit, juice for the kids and coffee for the adults. I was hoping your readers would have some ideas for decorations, invitations and activities for small children.
Ooh, so many ideas spring to mind. Read on, and be sure to add your own suggestions in the comments.
Assuming you want to stick close to the Green Eggs and Ham idea, but have a bit of wiggle room to include other Seussian works, here are a few thoughts to get you started:
Invitations: Rhyming seems called for here. If you don't think your poetry skills are up to snuff, you don't need to come up with an original rhyme. Just find your favorite or most relevant quote, and cobble it to suit your purposes. ("Would you celebrate in our house? Would you celebrate with a mouse?") You could do something as simple as print this out in a fun font, along with the party details, on colored cardstock. Or depending on your Photoshop skills, you could play with your favorite illustrations from the book.
Decorations: We're big advocates of keeping things simple. Just a couple of ideas can be done to great effect. Red and white streamers and balloons are very Cat in the Hat. A bowl of hardboiled eggs, dyed green, can serve as a cool centerpiece. If you want to take this idea a little further (depending on how much you trust the kids), you could write each child's (and parent's) name on an egg and use these as placecards. And the birthday kids HAVE to wear Cat in the Hat hats, of course!
Games: With three-year-olds, if you can squeeze one organized activity out of them, consider yourself lucky. How about a group reading of Green Eggs and Ham? One adult can read, and each child can be assigned one or more roles in the reading. You could make cards with the pictures and words for each the roles on them -- such as "mouse", "house", "fox", "box", "rain", "train", etc -- and hand them out beforehand. Then when that word comes up in the reading, that child (or grown-up, even) jumps up with their card and shouts it out. When you get to the end, have everyone join in with a rousing "Thank you! Thank you, Sam-I-Am!"
Favors: We like simple, well-made party favors that have life beyond the party day. Many Dr. Seuss books are available as abridged board books. Most people already have classics like Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham, so perhaps get something a little more obscure, such as There's a Wocket in my Pocket ($4.97 at Amazon).
The Seussian landscape is full of inspirational material, and we've only scratched the surface. Share your own tips with Valerie in the comments!
well, they HAVE to be Thing One and Thing Two! There are tons of t-shirts you can buy, for instance here (but probably too small)
http://www.twinshelpstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=458&HS=1
view pyjammy's profile
You can make green eggs and ham candy.
You'll need
small stick pretzles
green m&ms
white almond bark
melt almond bark in a double boiler. place two stick pretzles together on waxed paper and put a blob of melted almond bark in the middle and top with a green candy. repeat
view javagrrrl's profile
I think you can also use vanilla frosting. the almond bark holds it together nicely.
view javagrrrl's profile
Ditto on the Thing 1 and Thing 2 - you could easily make the shirts with red t-shirts. I always loved the machine that stars on the bellies of the sneetches in one of the books. Maybe you could make a "machine" (with a box and paper, paint, etc). and have the guests pose in a window for a souvenir. Of course, they could get stars on their bellies afterwards!
view inkstainedwriter's profile
Fabulous ideas abound on the web:
http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/party_catinthehat.htm
http://www.seussville.com/seussentennial/participation1.html
Have Fun!
view doris day's profile
Great ideas! Earlier this evening, I told my daughter about this idea and she said, "Oh! Can we go to that party?"
view bp090499's profile
I threw a Green Eggs and Ham party for my son's first this past May. Really, decor was in primary colors and lots of green. We had hot dogs. But the cake was green velvet shaped like a ham and two cupcake to serve as eggs. The cake was sliced like a ham and then served with two scoops of ice cream. Here's a couple of links...
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=5123042&albumID=1733770&imageID=33903615
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=5123042&albumID=1733770&imageID=33904088
view Meximama's profile
We recently had a Dr.Seuss Party for our five year old.
We painted stars on t-shirts for sneetches, as a starter.
We played games from http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/party_catinthehat.htm
We made kites as a craft. http://www.cdm.org/viewPage.asp?mlid=30&cid=1&sid=5&aid=94 is a great resource for parties.
We had a "cat in the hat" hat ice-creamcake (very easy!). A follow the foot (the foot book) treasure hunt, where they found green mini-pinata's (green eggs) that had tiny turtles (inside). There take home gift was a printable box from the Seussville site, that we popped a few goodies into.
I have blogged this on my practical party pages: http://www.se7en.org.za/practical-parties
view se7en's profile
There is a Dr. Seuss cookbook with a recipe for Green Eggs and Ham...the exact name escapes me, but you can run a search in "books" at amazon.com or some such online bookseller.
view 39520expat's profile