Planning

Lady Bugs may be a bug, but it's the one bug that doesn't leave us squirming!  I remember the day when my daughter first held a Lady Bug in her hand, staring in innocent wonder at this little piece of nature.  Then there was the Butterfly House of our local Botanical Gardens where a butterfly landed on my shoulder as my children laughed with the purest joy.  The buzz of a bumblebee brings a smile as it flits from flower to flower spreading the nectar that perpetuates our gardens…  These small wonders may be bugs, but they've never entered the world of creepy crawlies.  This is the perfect theme for young children that have a fascination with nature and all its little wonders!  It's colorful, interesting, and there are a lot of opportunities for nature science!

What is your "Party Picture"? Lady Bugs, butterflies and bumble bees

Ladybug Costume

This theme is inspired by colors found in these friendly insects - they are vibrant, full of movement, and exciting.  From the most adorable red and black lady bug, to the rainbows etched on butterfly wings, or the fun yellow and black stripes of the buzzing bumble bee!  Any color you want you can find in this palate of Mother Nature. Note, this theme would go well with a garden inspired party for young girls - you can make it absolutely adorable by working a tea party into your garden with dresses, hats and little white gloves!  This theme can really be enhanced by some internet research.  You'll find the most amazing pictures to inspire your own creativity.    This party can be taken to the Botanical Gardens, a Butterfly House or Insect Zoo in your area or an outdoor area where the children can go on a nature walk to find and discover all of the wonders living in their own back yards!

Invitations

Communicating with your Guests

Butterfly Art Project:  Cut out the silhouette of a Butterfly from poster board or construction paper and put party information on one side.  Include a ziploc bag of circles and squares in several colors and a glue stick for your little guest to add to the other side of the Butterfly for their own project.  Butterfly Net:  Create an invitation in the form of a Butterfly and insert it into a butterfly net  with a ribbon tied in a bow matching the colors of your party! Surprise Inside:  Create or purchase Lady Bug inspired invitations and inside the envelope or card scatter red and black glitter and hole punch circles in red and black.  This would also be great in yellow and black for a Bumble Bee inspired invitation.  The scatter adds a little excitement and festivity to your invitation!

Thank You Notes:

 

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Dress It Up

Usually with themes we can narrow your target down to a few obvious colors, but with Butterflies, there are unlimited options!  Select two or three colors as your primary colors and then add in a little.  If you work with a few main colors it will keep your décor looking coordinated and cohesive and prevent a sense of chaos.  There should probably be Green as a base color, because it inspires the feeling of nature - and then highlight your Lady Bug, or Bumble Bee or Butterflies throughout your space.  Use all of your surfaces, just as you would find outdoors - these friendly insects can be found flying, as well as sitting prettily on leaves and flowers.  Make sure you create a three dimensional party space. 

Decorate Your Party Space: Lady Bugs, butterflies and bumble bees

Layer your space:  It's easy to find mylar balloons inspired by this theme.  Layer your room with green streamers, crepe paper and construction paper leaves and then float your balloons at different heights throughout your room.  You can also get your child in on the fun by giving them red and yellow latex balloons to add black polka dots (Lady Bug) or yellow stripes (Bumble Bee) with a thick sharpee.  If your child is creative and loves Art in school, you can also give them projects beginning a few weeks before the party to start decorating Butterflies for your to hang throughout your space.  This adds a particularly personal dimension to your little girl's party. Create a Garden Indoors:  create a giant garden in your party space.  Use colored butcher paper, poster board or fabric to make a green backdrop with giant flower, grass, and our friendly bugs in every color you can imagine.  Attach to everything and surround your guests with a magical garden!  This would be particularly fun in a colder climate in the middle of winter when you are waiting for that first crocus to pop its head from your frosted flowerbeds.

 

Tablescape:  Lady Bugs, butterflies and bumble bees

Giant Beetle Centerpiece:  Cut a watermelon lengthwise in half and scoop out watermelon fruit out of both sides using a melon-baller.  Replace with watermelon, canteloupe and honeydew balls, strawberries etc.  (don't overfill, just come up to the edge).  Take one half and cut lengthwise again (leaving you with the original long half, and two narrow long quarters) and attach the two quarters, starting together on one end and then slightly splaying outward towards the other end (so that they touch on one end, but are about 3 - 4 inches apart at the other end).

Use wooden skewers to hold them in place.  Add a little more fruit in the exposed area so that it mounds over between the "wings".  Attach an orange at the front with a wooden skewer and use 6 bananas coming down from midway up the watermelon to arc down and touch the table (attach with skewers) as the legs.  Use two skewers with strawberries on the end as antennae and you have a colorful, edible beetle as your centerpiece!  A great dip for fresh fruit is one large jar of Marshmellow Fluff mixed (medium speed for one minute) with 1 package of light cream cheese.  You can add a dash of maraschino cherry juice for pink color and a cherry flavoring!

 

Decorations	Tablescapes
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Food/Drink

Food Lady Bugs, butterflies and bumble bees

• Get Inspired By Honey:  When you have a theme that includes bees, well, what better element to introduce than honey?  It's sweet, it's pretty and it's fun to teach children where this wondrous food comes from.  Consider making honey butter for southern style biscuits or dip apples in honey!
  • Honey comes in many forms and flavors - and as long as children are over two, it's a wonderful treat!  Consider having a "honey tasting" where children can spread different forms and flavors on a cracker and test how it tastes and describe the differences they can perceive.
• Caterpillar Kebabs:  Colorful fun fruit on a stick with chow mein noodles as "legs"!  Healthy, tasty and looks so fun!  Use grapes, ripe melon balls, banana chunks, strawberries, etc. on popsicle sticks.  Insert the noodles into sides of the softer fruit to form legs and antennae. 
• Giant Beetle Centerpiece:  Cut a watermelon lengthwise in half and scoop out watermelon fruit out of both sides using a melon-baller.  Replace with watermelon, canteloupe and honeydew balls, strawberries etc.  (don't overfill, just come up to the edge).  Take one half and cut lengthwise again (leaving you with the original long half, and two narrow long quarters) and attach the two quarters, starting together on one end and then slightly splaying outward towards the other end (so that they touch on one end, but are about 3 - 4 inches apart at the other end).  Use wooden skewers to hold them in place.  Add a little more fruit in the exposed area so that it mounds over between the "wings".  Attach an orange at the front with a wooden skewer and use 6 bananas coming down from midway up the watermelon to arc down and touch the table (attach with skewers) as the legs.  Use two skewers with strawberries on the end as antennae and you have a colorful, edible beatle as your centerpiece!  A great dip for fresh fruit is one large jar of Marshmellow Fluff mixed (medium speed for one minute) with 1 package of light cream cheese.  You can add a dash of maraschino cherry juice for pink color and a cherry flavoring!

Beverages

Food	Beverages
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Cake

Cakes and Desserts

• Garden Pot Dirt Cake:  This take on a trifle will leave kids loving your creepy crawly flower pot and begging for more!  Get a new, clean terra cotta flower pot (8") and line it with 3 layers of saran wrap, leaving about 2 inches of saran over the rim of the pot. 
• You will need 1 package of instant chocolate pudding mix (prepared and chilled), 16-20 ounces of Oreo cookies (crushed) , 1/2 cup melted butter, gummy candy bugs and worms, 12 ounce whipped topping and 8 ounces of cream cheese.
• Separate one cup of the crushed Oreos, and pour the melted 1/2 cup of butter over the remainder.  Press this mixture into the bottom of your line flower pot.  Add some gummy worms and bugs.  Stir half of whipped topping and all of the cream cheese together then spoon on top of the cookie layer (if you want this to be brown and soil like as well, mix in some Hershey's syrup!  Next is the layer of chocolate pudding with a few more gummies and worms mixed in.  Finish off with the rest of the whipped topping, gummies, then cover with the remainder of the Oreo cookies so that the entire concoction looks like dirt in a flower pot.  Add some silk flowers and voila!  Chill and serve.
• Lady Bug Birthday Cake (or Beetle Cake):  Use a dome form to make your cake (any flavor cake works for this!) as well as a batch of cup cakes.  The dome cake will be the body of your lady bug and a cupcake will be the head (use remaining cupcakes for Cobweb cakes).  Tint white frosting red and frost cake and tint white frosting black for the cupcake "head".  Add small round chocolate mints or Oreo cookies as the ladybug's spots and gumdrops for eyes.  Use licorice for eyelashes, mouth and antennae.  This cake can also be any sort of Beetle as well!   

 

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Entertainment

Your friendly garden insects, the cute ones, are the guests of honor at this party.  So get inspired by their sounds, their movement, and their colors in the activities you plan.  Also, keep in mind that you are engaging the young minds of budding naturalists, inspiring wonder over simple elements of our environment that many of us have come to take for granted.  Teaching is a simple byproduct of this theme.   

Activities

• Be your Own Bug (A/C):  Have T-shirts in every color, as well as fabric paints and pens.  Let the guests add their own buggy designs - wings, spots, stripes, etc. to their T-shirt representing their favorite bug.  Have pictures of bugs at the craft table to add inspiration!
• Bug Creations (A/C):  Supply guests with walnut shells, pompoms, clothes pins, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, netting, colorful paper, paints, glitter, scissors, tape and glue to make bugs of their own.
• Bug Hunt:  Hide small plastic bugs (be careful of choking hazards for younger guests) throughout your party space and let your kids loose with a "jar" to fill!  
• Ladybug Discovery:  Live ladybugs can be purchased (typically they are intended for gardeners who want these cute little bugs in their gardens because they eat bad bugs that like to nibble on vegetables) and put in a ladybug "lodge" (check the internet or your local nursery).  You can have the children observe the ladybugs in their environment, even have some in baby food jars with holes in the lids for closer inspection.  Have a water soaked raisin to feed the ladybugs while they are in captivity (keep them in a cool area release them early in the morning or late in the day). 
• Caterpillar Catch:  Form the children into a line (a caterpillar) with one player as the head and another as the end - all of the other children are the body.  Tie a scarf around the child at the end of the caterpillar, leaving at least a foot of excess fabric trailing behind (tie it so that it's loose around the child's waist sot that if it's tugged hard the child won't be injured).  Each child will hold the waist of the child in front of them and the goal of the game is for the child playing the head to catch the scarf.  The caterpillar body will twist and turn but cannot break.  The child wearing the scarf should avoid being caught.  Once caught, the end becomes the head, and everyone else shifts back one spot before playing again.
• June Bug Jump: (Derivative of Musical Chairs) Cut out bugs from construction paper (about 12" in diameter).  Using double sided tape, attach the bugs to the floor, forming a circle (one per child).  When the music begins, ask kids to jump from spot to spot (remove one spot as the children are jumping) and when the music stops, everyone must try to land on a spot.  Continue until everyone is out!  As children are eliminated, make it a game for them as well - cheering on the remaining kids by buzzing or making various bug noises!
• Lady Bug Antennae (A/C):  Purchase inexpensive red or black head bands.  Use black pipe cleaners and small Styrofoam balls painted red.  Curl the pipe cleaners around a pencil and attach the red balls and attach to the head band.  These are fun, simple little lady bug antennae that can be worn by everyone.  This is a great Arts and Crafts activity while waiting for all of your guests to arrive.

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Prizes / Favors

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