Who doesn’t love the circus??? Well, the circus may or may not be coming to your neighborhood but you can definitely bring the circus to your very own backyard! Try out a few of these summer fun, circus party ideas and let us know how it goes and what you think!
If you’re looking for some more circus or carnival ideas, we have a few other parties and posts. Click here to check them out! We’ve also created a set of Vintage Circus Printable Images that go along with this party and you’re free to print out if you would like to add them to your party!
DECOR
We aimed for a vintage feel with the decor and so had some Vintage Posters and Vintage Gift Bags (which we used for the goodie bag/favors) from Oriental Trading. We also had a few Miniature Paper Centerpieces from Amazon that we sprinkled around the party area.
ARRIVAL
To add to the decor, we had a few booths set up so that when guests arrived they could get into the ‘vintage circus’ feel immediately.
We opted to hand out some paper strips to tape to their wrists (like circus/carnival entry bracelets). This wasn’t fancy but we also set up a few markers so the kids could decorate them if they wanted.
We repurposed our a foldable card table and turned it into a “Fortune Teller Booth” but had to drape a black plastic tablecloth over it to make it more ‘tent-like’. (Truly, this would have looked a bit better with an actual black tablecloth, but you gotta work with what’s on hand 😉 ) Rather than this being a manned station, we had a small table of Fortune Teller Scratch Cards and Paper Fortune Tellers for the guests to play around with.
FOOD & DRINKS
Our table was decorated in red and white to add to the circus/carnival feel. We served up traditional carnival food (hot dogs, pizza, fries, etc). We used regular red and white paper plates for the pizza but had a few red baskets and liners for the hot dogs. We also created a snack station to hang some animal crackers and chips and have bags full of peanuts on the side. Click here for a step by step tutorial on creating this inexpensive, cute carnival booth!
Appetizers:
- Animal Crackers
Main Course:
- Hot Dogs
- Corn Dogs
- Pizza
- Fries
Dessert:
- Cracker Jacks
- Cotton Candy
- Funnel Cake
Drinks:
- Pop
GAMES
Since we had this ‘circus’ in the backyard, we opted to mix in some water fun. But if you’re indoors, you can swap out the water balloons and water fun for regular balloons or drier materials – entirely up to you 🙂
- The circus must open with the Master of Ceremonies, and he ALWAYS has a top hat and wand. For our first round of games, we challenged our guests to hold a top hand and try to flip it onto their heads. (It’s actually harder than you may think). For the faint of heart, we had the magician wands that they could twirl with their hands.
- The Bucket Throw. What circus/carnival wouldn’t be complete without a few games where you toss balls into a bucket, cup, or glass milk bottle? Well, we did not have an abundance of glass milk bottles on hand, so we went an easier route. We set up galvanized buckets on the ground and had kids toss a few balls into them (closest first). When the novelty wore off, we swapped the balls for WATER BALLOONS!!!
- The ‘Knife Throw’. Okay, so kids and knife throwing don’t normally mix but we had to have some variation of this classic carnival booth 🙂 We opted for a velcro ball throw. We did have two – just so to make it a bit more competitive and add to the fun.
- The Clown Contest. We could let kids paint their own faces, but we opted for a somewhat cleaner idea. We had a bucket of regular balloons and had kids draw their funniest clown faces with markers. We also had a bucket of filled up water balloons and told them only the bravest could paint a clown face on these balloons (with pen only 😉 You can imagine, some kiddos weren’t so gentle with their drawing utensils and got a watery surprise).
- The Fire Breathing Act. OK, so again, fire and kids don’t necessarily mix, so we had to use our imagination a bit. We had a large orange (because we couldn’t find a red one) bubble wand and challenged kids to make the largest bubbles they could. (To adjust for covid, we had them simply shake their wands, twirl, or hold them in the air for the wind to create the bubbles). We also had one of the large bubble rope-like bubble wands which does make quite a few large bubbles if you soak the rope and run! 🙂
- And rather than having a traditional piñata, we had a ‘dunk tank’, where the kids had to pick a paper from a bucket. The papers had either #1, #2, or #3, which corresponded to the # of buckets of water we’d toss on them 🙂 AND because it was a hot day, most wanted to do this over and over again, so the #s just went by the wayside. Haha!
GOODIE BAGS
Our Vintage Gift Bags doubled up as decoration for the party as they had a Vintage Circus feel. In addition to some candy and a thank you note, we added some cracker jacks, mini rubber duckies, and mini carnival fish.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you so much for checking out our party planning article. Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next celebration!
If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. If you’re looking for some more circus or carnival ideas, we have a few other parties and posts. Click here to check them out! Also, If you haven’t already and are still looking for that perfect party theme, feel free to check out some of our other party ideas: Party Guides!
Happy Party Planning 🙂
