Animal Help-out 9-11 girls A great party that animal obsessed girls will love.  2 weeks in advance send out invitations to your guests 4-10 would be an optimal amount. Ask at your local scrapbooking shop if there would be anyone interested in making invites, most places do this quite cheaply. State the RSVP date, location - local animal shelter, host of the party, what the party is celebrating, the date and duration of the party, if transport will be provide and if parents are welcome to stay during the party. Also add that instead of presents could parents buy donations for the local animal shelter instead, in the form of food [dry and wet], accesories and toys, hygeine products, services, cash or time. We had some very generous gifts, one child donated 5 x 20kg bags of dry dogfood and another donated 20 hours of free services at her mothers veterinary clinic and heartworm medicine for 3 dogs for a year and a leash, most others donated either a few tins of wet food, cash or toys. A few weeks in advance organise for the girls to come to the shelter and volunteer some time. The staff are usually more then happy to make sure the guests won't be handling vicious animals and find age appropriate jobs for them. After a period of time helping out take some time to have lunch/afternoon tea picnic style as most shelters have an outdoor area. Some food ideas are cookies in the shape of dog bones, dogs, cats, birds, horses, fish and kennels - animal crackers - lolly snakes and dinosaurs - and water in cups shaped like water dishes. A neat idea is to buy crazy straws in the shape of cats, available online. Any plates and cups should have some animals on it. After that play a trivia game about domestic and wild animals, your local library should have many books available to help you find out more about animals if you don't know a lot. Next door to the shelter a local park was situated so we walked next door and met with some guests, the guinea pig guys who had guinea pigs to hold and others that performed trick that the girls just loved. After that it was cake time! The cake was shaped like a dog and had spots on it made with icing and eyes made from a round chocolate. When that ended it was time to hand out party favours go home, the party favour was a littlest pet shop pet [or similar], a palaroid snap of the girl with one of the animals, a sheet of paw-print, dog or cat stickers, a cute rubber and pencil set with dogs, cats and birds on them, a 50 cent ornament of a dog or horse, and a poster of a horse we got for free on magazines that we had kept over the last few months for that purpose and a thankyou note. Parents picked up some happy children.