Safari Adventure This Safari was a 4 year olds dream. We began by printing passport invitations. The front of the invitation had a jungle border and was printed with lines for the child's name, address, age, etc. and had a spot marked "Attach Photo Here". The inside of the invitation was worded like this.    THIS IS YOUR PASSPORT FOR A BIRTHDAY SAFARI FILLED WITH FUN AND EXCITEMENT.     ANDY WILL BE LEADING AN EXPEDITION THROUGH AFRICA (DATE) THE ADVENTURE STARTS AT (TIME) ALL EXPLORERS SHOULD BRING THEIR COMPLETED PASSPORTS. ADVENTURERS MAY WANT TO PRACTICE THEIR WILD ANIMAL SOUNDS, ESPECIALLY ROARING LIKE A LION.(continuation of Safari Adventure)  From a catalog order company, I ordered straw Pith Helmets for each of the children and a few extra for decorations.  I also ordered lots of wild animal stickers, and a jungle scene growth chart.  The party store had brightly colored wild animal print paper supplies.   I kept the food simple because most of the guests were overnight guests and I was preparing dinner later. The 1995 Wilton Cake Decorating Yearbook had the perfect cake - "Jungle Fever". This was a two layered cake but what made it really neat was that most of the decorating was done with homemade and decorated animal cookies.  Lions, Elephants, and Zebras, were lined up around the sides of the layers with only a little "Grass" (made with green icing) and tiny flowers to add color.  I'm not much of a cake decorator, but this one is definitely the cutest b-day cake I've ever made.  I set up play areas with plastic wild animals and zoo toys for the kids to play and get to know each other before the activities began. For fun, I found the dissolving capsules that turn into sponges in the shapes of wild animals and bought them for the kids to play with. I used the ends of fax paper rolls and rolled paper out all over the kitchen floor. After the kids dissolved their capsules into the animal shapes, I let them sponge paint on the paper.  This was a big hit! We also read and acted out a story about going on safari and books about the jungle.  We worked a giant sized floor puzzle featuring endangered animals and we had a "Lion Roaring" contest.  (Each lion won an award, one for loudest, one for most scary, most original, etc.) The growth chart was a really fun activity.  It came with large sticker leaves that held a picture of each child and they were placed at the appropriate spot on the chart.  This is a nice keepsake for my son,  we can look back and see how tall everyone was back then. The passports were also collected from each guest as a scrapbook memento for my son.    Party favors included their pith helmets that we enjoyed wearing during the party, plastic jungle animals, candy, stickers, wild animal stencils, and other assorted jungle toys.  After the expedition ended, we used the leftover animal sponge shapes to make our own thank you cards. This was a nice personal touch and allowed my son to really participate in the thank you process.   Decorating for a safari party was fun. I have very large paper jungle animals made by using an overhead projector.  Lawn torches and grass table skirts add to the theme nicely.  I have also used plastic milk jugs to make wild animal masks for decorations. This would also make a great craft project if you wanted to use this theme for older kids.