How to Make Your Children’s Tea Parties Extra Special
Tea parties are one of the staples of childhood and often mean asking adults to join in the fun. Having the same tea party over and over again may be a blast for your 3-year-old. But if you find yourself a bit bored after the tenth tea party you have attended this week, read on for ideas that will add some new life into tea parties that everyone can enjoy.
Before the Party
Create a Theme
Help your child pick a fun theme like princesses and knights, garden, or a favorite animal. Use this to guide your decorations, food, and games.
Create Invitations
Encourage your child to create some simple invitations using drawings and stickers. They can hand them out to family members or their stuffed animals to invite them to the tea party.
Dress Up
Combine your preschooler’s love for dressing up with the tea party for extra fun! They can pick a fairy tale character or just use their favorite outfit. You can even help their furry friends dress for the occasion by dressing stuffed animals in hats, scarves, and jewelry.
Crafty Decorations
Have your child decorate using paper chains, drawings for placements, and their favorite figurines. You can create crowns or wands for the guests. To add an extra bit of magic, consider adding fairy lights to the area.
Changing up tea time
Serve Real Snacks
If your tea parties are usually full of imaginative food and drinks, suprise and delight your child with real food they can serve to their guests. Simple finger food will be best such as mini sandwiches (cut into fun shapes with cookie cutters), small cookes, or fruit and veggetables.
Add Magical Tea
Tea parties with water are fun but tea parties with colored water equate to magical tea. Just a drop or two of food coloring and you have safe and edible tea that will feel more real to your child. You can even mix two colors and watch their eyes light up when it creates a new color. Add a bit of extra fun by telling your child this tea has special “powers”, like making your giggle or granting wishes.
Go Outside for a Picnic Tea Party
If weather permits, have the tea party outdoors in a backyard, park, or garden. Bring a picnic blanket and enjoy nature while having your tea and snacks.
Switch to a Bedtime Tea Party
With all your child’s favorite stuffed animals, have a before bed tea party. Once the activities are done, encourage your child to tuck in the stuffed animals for “bedtime” and say goodnight to each one.
Fun and games
Games with Tea
During the party, you can incorporate games like “Simon Says” with a tea party twist (“Simon says take a sip of tea!”). You can play I Spy with a theme on the party table or decorations. Or, let everyone take a turn adding a sentence to a silly story.
Get Up and Dance
Have some music playing in the background and at various points in the party, encourage everyone to get up and dance. You can even grab some stuffed animal partners and have a blast showing off their moves.
Musical Chairs with a Twist
If you have stuffed friends at your party, play an altered version of musical chairs where the child moves the stuffed animals from seat-to-seat before the music stops.
BONUS:
Go on an Adventure Before the Tea Party
Play LilliQuest to help your child find clues along the route to the party.
