It’s all about puzzles! Our little one was a bit obsessed with Team Umizoomi from Nick Jr – which we definitely encouraged. It was a great way to get her into patterns, puzzles, and math! For her birthday, we thought we’d share the love and threw her a Team Umizoomi party, but really any sort of puzzles and games theme would work with these too.
Try out a few of these suggestions below and let us know how it goes and what you think!
INVITATIONS
For parties, get your guests in the mood with puzzled themed invites. We used Team Umizoomi invites but you can use any character your kiddo is into at the time. Instead of just handing out invites, we cut them into a few shapes to make them into puzzles. (Before cutting, we reinforced with cardboard on the back). To make sure parents got the message, we did send an invite via email with a note saying we made the invitations into puzzles for the kiddos. We didn’t go “full puzzle mode” with the interlocking pieces, but just cut them up into large triangles and other straight shapes. The kids loved putting them together.
DECOR
All around the party are, we had puzzles and games for guests to play. We added a few quick games near the food tables and then some other ones (Tangrams, Wooden Tic Tac Toe, chess) around the tables where guests could eat.
Nick jr also had a ton of printables – Umizoomi Printables. We used quite a few (Bot’s Belly poster, placemats to color, decorations, etc..). We used the scavenger hunt printables and also hid those around the party area.
ARRIVAL
Most guests will trickle in a few minutes before or after the actual start time of the party. To keep everyone in theme, have a few activities in an area of the party.
We had a few printouts (word search, coloring pages) to keep kids entertained while the rest of the group arrived.
We also printed out Bot’s Belly Screen poster (Nickelodeon Parents) from the Nickelodeon Website (link below). It printed out on standard paper and we glued them to a larger poster board so that it looked (relatively :)) like one piece. When kids came in, we let them pose for as many pictures as they wanted in the belly screen.
FOOD & DRINKS
Appetizers:
- We had a few bits of fruit out and some kabob sticks. We let the kids create their own yummy pattern kabob. You could have a few out as well for examples.
- Alphabet and # soup
Main Course:
- Pattern PIzza – We cheated a bit and just bought some oven cheese pizzas (instead of making pizza from scratch) but added some toppings in patterns.
Dessert:
- Number cookies. We made regular sugar cookies shaped as numbers using Number Cookie Cutters.
- Cupcakes with Number Cupcake Toppers
CRAFTS
For our before-game craft, we had each kid create their own paper die. We followed the First Palette – Paper Dice tutorial below but actually created these on large, colored poster board for each kiddo. (If you would like to see a step by step guide, please click here). We let them draw or use stickers for the dots. (We planned for a smaller party for this one, so it the extra effort to bending the poster board was a bit more manageable. The kids also liked having these “larger than life” dice.
We used these cubes throughout the games.
GAMES
It’s not a secret that waiting for your turn can be quite difficult for little kids. So we turned that into a game as well. For any games we had to take turns, rather than go from youngest to oldest or any particular order, we had them roll their own die before each game and let largest # go first then next largest, etc…. The kids had just as much fun doing this part before each game as the games themselves!
We also had a puzzle made out of a printout of the characters with a riddle overlaid on the image (The riddle led to where their pinata and goodie bags were hidden). After each game, we gave the group a puzzle piece. — If you’ve got a younger group, you can trace out the outline of the puzzle pieces so they can match it that way as well.
- For our first game was “Pattern Power”. We gave each kiddo a pipe cleaner and had some colorful pony beads on the table. We had each child create any pattern they wanted. Once everyone was done, the birthday kid would guess the pattern. Then the next child (highest # on their dice) would guess next.
- Continuing on patterns, we had each kid try to “cross” the room by stepping only their chosen pattern of construction paper colors. We laid out a few (in obvious pattern lines) and then had a few others just around, so kids could step on them to get across.
- Airplanes! On the Nickelodeon website, there’s a print out of Geo’s Airplanes. We printed out a few for each kid and let them create their airplanes (we also had some regular plain paper for the more creative types that wanted to draw their own). Then each kid rolled their dice to determine who would throw their airplane first. We left them on the ground to see who’s went the farthest.
- Stack the blocks! We had a few large Melissa and Doug Blocks in the house, but you can use package boxes or really anything stackable (You can find a mini-version of jenga-like blocks at the Dollar Store as well). Have each kid roll their die to determine who’d go first. Then the first kid would roll their die again and have to stack that # of blocks to build a tower. (If you’ve got an older group you can have them double up or add, e.g. kid rolls 2 but has to stack 4 (2×2) or 6 (2×3) blocks high. Then the next kid gets to try to knock the tower with a ball. Repeat until each kid has a turn.
- Team Umizoomi’s Scavenger Hunt. We printed this one right off the website and let the kids roam free and find the items.
- Instead of a traditional pinata, we actually had a punch board with different colors. Each kid got to pick one of each color to punch out (each color had the same item, so everyone ended up getting the same thing). We followed the tutorial on Fun Family Crafts – Punchbox.
GOODIE BAGS
If you want to keep in theme when you’re guests leave, sprinkle in some puzzles and candy for their goodie bag along with any of the regular candy or hand outs you want to give out.
For our goodie bags, we included a rubix cube for the older kids (Rubix Cube (set of 22)) and tangrams (Tangram (Set of 4))for the younger ones. We also added in a puzzle from the dollar store for each kiddo.
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. 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!
