Dora the Explorer-3rd birthday My daughter, Morgan, wanted a Dora birthday party.  We invited about 10 kids. We decided to have a mexican fiesta.  We had Tacos, taquitos, chips and salsa.  I also had corn dogs for the kids that did not eat tacos. We had juice and punch to drink. Soda for the adults as well.  The house was decorated in all of the Dora characters that I had drawn on poster board. The kids had fun going around and trying to name the characters on the poster board.  There was a dora tablecloth and different colored balloons as well. I went to an outlet party store and fould a lot of the decorations on clearance-not necessarily dora themed but either mexican or colorful items.  This saved a lot of money.  I had party agendas posted everywhere so the parents could tell their kids what was coming next and so parents would not leave thinking the party was over and miss out on the fun. As the kids arrived, I invited them to color dora pictures until all the guest were present.  Once the guest arrived, we ate lunch.  Then after lunch, we started the party. I wanted the party to be fun for all the kids so I decided to play games and they could win prizes from the games.  The games were chosen so there was no skill involved on who was the winner- due to we had many different sizes and ages of kids. The first game was called surprise hat.  Each child got to chose a birthday party hat to put on. Whichever child had a dora sticker under the hat- won a prize. I had a big basket of inexpensive prizes that the children could choose one prize everytime they won a game. They loved this!!! The next game was musical chairs.  I decided to write the names of the dora character on paper plates.  I had each child stand on a paper plate-when the music started they walked in a circle. When the music stopped, I pulled a dora character out of a hat and whichever child was on that plate, had to pick up their plate and sit out of the game.  We continued this until there was one child left.  That child then got to pick a prize from the prize basket.  The kids and adults laughed a lot with this one. This was better than kids fighting over chairs especially due to different sizes and strengths of the kids at party. The next game was pin the glove on swiper-our version of pin the tail on the donkey.  Whichever kid got the closes- won a prize from the prize basket. The next game was fishing in crocodile lake. I had made each child a map to tell where crocodile lake was.  There was a troll bridge( our back porch steps with a troll under it), the spooky forest(made out of streamers) and the crocodile lake.  The lake was my daughter's wading pool. Inside a had floating whales that I had pipe cleaners tied in a circle around the tails so the kids could fish them out with a fishing pole and plastic hook.  On the bottom of each whale there was a number. This number was the order that the kids got to go a pick a prize from the prize basket.  (The kids loved it because everyone got a prize). Then we had cake and ice cream.  The cake was a dora cake that I had made using a dora cake pan. We opened presents next. Last game was to find the party favors.  I gave the children three hints.  The first hint was- "Now that the party is almost through- you have to find your next hint on something that floats and is blue."  So the kids had to find a blue balloon where their next clue was- "So, you found your first clue in a bunch of balloons- the next can be found on what Morgan watches her cartoons."  The kids had to find a TV for their next clue. The last clue was-"This is the last clue before you say good-bye, your prizes can be found where the clothes get dry."  I had all the party favor bags in the dryer.  The kids loved this-trying to figure out the clues. The party favor bags were purple gift bags that I got after christmas for 75% off-  I cut out eyes and mouth out of construction paper and glued to each bag to make it look like dora backpacks. In each bag was a thank you card, binoculars, compass, horn, whistle, and babyfood jars filled with m&ms. Before the kids left we got together for a group picture.  As the kids were leaving, they gathered their party favor bags, prizes they had won and a balloon. All the kids had fun.  My daughter had a blast!!