3 year-old Bob the Builder Party This past weekend my son had the time of his life at his "Bob-the-Builder" third birthday party. He chose the theme and wanted to have the party in our back yard. We held the party from 9 am to 11 am, since that is the nicest time of day in the middle of the summer here in Texas.  Despite the early hour, almost everyone on the invitation list came to the party! I got excellent ideas about party invitations and decorations from this website. We don't have a mailbox, and I wanted to put balloons outside our house for the party.  I got two helium balloons- and attached them to two mini construction cones- by tying the string of the balloon to a metal spoon inside each cone. This weighted down the cones nicely, and the balloons floated three or four feet in the air. For food, I had ham and cheese strata, lemon poppyseed bread, fruit salad, bagels, cream cheese, juice, coffee, tea, and water. The parents ate while watching the kids play.  As each child arrived for their "construction shift", they received a construction hat (labeled with their name and a Bob the Builder sticker above it), a baggie of assorted stickers (labeled with their name to take home as a party favor), a plastic pail, and an inflatable hammer (purchased from Oriental trading company).  I directed them to a table in the living room, where they were invited to decorate their construction hats with stickers. When six or seven kids had arrived, I told them that there were many areas in our back yard that needed fixing, and that these areas were marked with X's of red tape.  Their job was to find these X's and hammer them, or use some other plastic tools from my son's tool bench.  I said that this would be a great help to us, and prevent the structures from falling down.  Outside, I had put X's on the patio furniture, swing set, tool bench, a plastic wheelbarrow, and even tree trunks and large plant leaves!  There were a couple of older children at the party, and I told these kids that  there was a contest for the person who could correctly count the number of X's in the yard.  I had put some of them in hard-to-find palces, so they had fun with this activity.  When the three year olds had had enough fun hammering the Xs, I told them that it was time to "paint the deck." I poured "clear varnish" (water from a 5 gallon paint bucket) into their pails and handed out some clean paint brushes. The kids enjoyed painting not only the deck, but also a metal dump truck that we had in the yard.  A few "builders" who were still going strong after the painting was done, and I asked these children to "resurface" the cement patio by drawing on it with chalk (I had drawn a couple of things on the patio to get them started).  During the party, we had "Bob" videos playing inside near the food area, and a couple of kids enjoyed watching those and playing with some assorted toys that were available.  Towards the end of the party, the children congregated inside, and we served cake and ice cream. As each child left, we gave him or her a packet of gummy tools purchased from Oriental Trading Company. They also took home their construction hats, bags of stickers, pails, inflatable hammers as party favors.