Good morning dear friends! I hope you had a lovely weekend and that this week started in the best possible way. We are still in Córdoba, Argentina, having a great time. It really is wonderful to meet with friends and family and feel that time has passed by and, at the same time, it has not, to know that we have so much to tell each other but that, when we get together, it feels that we are actually picking up a conversation that we left unfinished only the day before. I suppose true love, true friendship is what makes this miracle possible. This was the spirit of Luka and Zoe’s birthday party, what made it a most happy, most memorable occasion.

As I mentioned before, I had planned this birthday celebration as an art party, not only because my children love doing art, but also because I thought it could integrate kids of different ages. Finding activities that could suit children from 18 months to 7 years old was, however, challenging. I didn’t want younger kids to get frustrated, nor older ones to get bored. I wanted an art area where children of all ages would be safe and which they could reach without the assistance of an adult, so we set a piece of wood as a low table (it was held by a bucket of 20 litres of paint and a window frame). I also wanted children to feel relaxed, not rushed, and to take as much time as they wanted with each activity, so I only planned three tasks for a 3 hour period.

The first activity was the painting of small cotton souvenir bags, which we placed in the art table at the beginning of the party. We had already warned parents that children had to come “dressed to get messy”, but I wanted to minimize damage nonetheless, so ,instead of  fabric paint, we gave children an assortment of fabric markers in different colors. To our delight, they all loved the activity and were really happy to know they would be able to take the bags home…and that they could be used to fill  with candy from the piñata at the end of the party!

We also provided them with cardboard paper  and lots of art supplies, such as stamps with different shapes and ink colors, colored pencils…

…different types of chalks…

 …crayons in diverse colors and sizes, markers….

 and even an assortment of gibré glitter.

After painting their bags, children started experiencing with the different art supplies, mixing them in their art work, completely focused and immersed in the activities. They would come and go from the dessert table to the art station, grabbing a bite while working on their creations, and then rush to their parents to show them what they had done. It was a real pleasure to see them all mingle and laugh, and enjoy their time together, despite having met at the party for the first time.

The third artisctic activity involved food and was shown in this previous post: children were able to decorate their own cupcakes with sprinkles in different shapes and colors (moons and stars, bears, dolphins and dogs, non-pareils and little hearts).

And, finally, the piñata, which was not an activity in itself, but it was definitely a highly awaited moment!

It was funny that, after decorating their treat bags and discussing for hours how much candy they were going to put in them, when piñata time finally arrived all children forgot about them and just gathered candy in their laps, until someone reminded them about their bags.

So that was it: three simple art activities and a piñata, a few home-made sweets and tons of love. The best of it all is that time flew and children left happy with their bags, their art-work and their souvenir-cookies. Whatever had gone wrong before, didn’t matter because we were left full of happy memories!

Have a great week!