Celebrating Birthdays> Birthday Party Themes

Circus Theme Party

Ages: 4 to 7

Invitations:

Create a cotton candy card by folding a piece of whit cardstock in half. Cut a long skinny triangle out of the paper with the fold at the wide base of the triangle, so that it opens up like a card. Get pastel colored cotton puffs and glue them about halfway up on the triangle so that it looks like cotton candy. Write the information for the party on the inside.

Another fun idea is to get some in the shell peanuts. Put them in small cute containers or party bags, then make a card that looks like an admittance ticket and tie it to the container.

Decorations:

If you are doing the party indoors you can create a tent like atmosphere by tacking streamers to the ceiling in the center and then having them fan out in a circular arrangement to the edge of the ceiling. Get lots of helium balloons and set them up all over the party area. If you can get large pictures of circus animals such as elephants, monkeys, and tigers; set them up throughout the party area. You could also use stuffed animals.

Party Crafts & Activities:

Face painting is a fun activity and craft for a circus theme. If the attendees are very young you might want to have an adult put the face paint on them, but if they are older they will enjoy putting it on each other.

Another fun craft is to make clown hats. You can get all sorts of different types of cheap hats from party supply stores that the kids can decorate with sequins, puff balls, glitter and anything else they can dream up. Older kids would probably enjoy having a “contest” where they show off their hats. Be sure to give an “award” to each child. You can make them very specific so each child gets one, such as most colorful, best use of glitter and so on.

Games and Activities:

Traditional carnival type games are perfect for a circus theme. You could decorate empty cans to look like peanuts. Set them up in a pyramid and tell the kids that they need to help the elephants get the peanuts by knocking them over. Give them three tennis balls so they can try and knock the pyramid of cans down.

Make a bean bag toss that has a clown, elephant or tiger on the front.

Have a balloon prize stomp. Write numbers on slips of paper and roll the paper up and put it in a balloon. Have the number correlate with a prize. Let the kids each get a balloon then stomp on it like an elephant until it pops. Then they can find out what their prize is.

Use a box to create a funny photo cutout. Put clowns or acrobats or other circus performers on it and cut out a hole where the face should be. Take pictures of the kids in it. Send the pictures home with the kids as a party favor.

Food Ideas:

Animal Crackers in the individual circus themed boxes are perfect. Have cotton candy, candy apples, popcorn, and any other circus type food you can think of.

Make cupcakes that look like clowns by using ice cream cones upside down to make a hat for the clown. You can let the kids decorate their own cupcakes with faces, or you can make them. Another great idea is our Clown Cupcakes made in 'silly feet' cupcake wrappers.