For my son's 4th birthday, we decided to have a construction theme. I tweaked many ideas I found here on this site. For the invitations, I used a picture of my son in his
"worker man" clothes on the front. Inside read, "Foreman ---- is turning four.
Theres's lots of work for us in store. Come to our construction site. March the 12th is dynamite! Your shift will be 11 'til 2 with lots of messy work to do. please call our construction yard to order lunch...it won't be hard!" We began by showing the kids the construction site's time cards on a board prepared ahead of time and putting Home Depot tool aprons on them to keep. Each activity was listed and they put a sticker on each activity when it was over. We began with a bean bag toss through a board I painted of a dump truck dumping dirt, then we played "Dress the builder" where we had 2 teams of 5 dress one person in construction worker clothes and accessories. We did this twice and had them try to beat the clock. Then we played "Put the tool on Bob the Builder," where each child chose one tool (I'd made a variety) and they could put it wherever, no right or wrong, just fun. After that, we had our lunchbreak. The kids pre-ordered sandwiches which I put in a bag with a juicebox, apple, and bag of graham cracker sticks which I thought looked like boards. There was a sticker on the front which said "Jane the Builder." Adults ate from a deli tray and various salads. We then played construction cone ring toss using diving rings. Then we broke out the tools and gave each child a kit to make with their parent of a tool or crayon or whatever caddy. My husband precut, sanded and predrilled holes for this. After that we had cake & ice cream where I baked 2 9x13 cakes which I put at one end of a 2x4 piece of pegboard. I frosted it and put green coconut on top to look like grass. Out of the left end, I scooped out a chunk to look like a hole, put 4 white Good & Plentys in line in it to look like a pipe and surrounded it with candy corns placed deep enough to look like safety cones. To the left of that just off the cake was a toy dump truck "dumping" crumbled brownies to look like dirt. To the right of the cake, I had a posterboard banner glued to 2 paint stirrers which read, "Happy 4th Birthday to Foreman ----!" and put a gum wall underneath with a 5 inch plastic Bob the Builder and more safety cones next to it. The last activity was an obstacle course which they all seemed to love the best. They crawled through a nylon tunnel on our front porch, ran down the few steps, hopped in our Green Machine motorized vehicle and drove 20 feet. They stopped, put in 4 or so wooden 2x4 scraps, turned left and drove another 15 feet. They stopped and transferred the wood to a kid-sized wheelbarrel and pushed it in a weaving pattern through 4 safety cones. They stopped at the work pench where they hammered several golf tees into styrofoam, turned left again and ran under a couple sawhorses and ran up the stept and rang a bell. Extra adults are really helpful here. This was the quietest kids party we've ever had, I think because we kept them hopping! They took home paint stirrers, carpenter's pencils, their time sheets and their tool caddy. Oh, and food looked cute served in new, clean paint trays and paint buckets. I also used builder's paper on rolls (the kind builders lay out on the floor when you move in a house) as the tablecloths. The kids sat on dropcloths for some of the games and lunch. It was really fun to prepare and the kids seemed happy to move quickly from one activity to the next.
