This is a great idea for wild west, cowboy or frontier theme parties
Nice project to do together
Details
A Pioneer Party - Because my daughter and I love Little House on the Prairie and all things Laura Ingalls, we hosted a pioneer party for her 7th birthday.
The house was decorated using old Little House calendars and I hung brown crepe paper along the walls, up to a V on the ceiling to mimic a log cabin. I decorated using red and clear balloons. We even had a "real" log cabin...purchased from the Just Pretend catalog - made of cardboard and large enough to fit a few children. I also had a large covered wagon bulletin board-type decoration, purchased at a teacher store.
The table was set with a red and white tablecloth, and we used tin cups (available at a camping store) to drink. Each guest had a place set with a tin pail (craft store find) and a set of marbles (a pioneer game) wrapped inside a square of calico, with a penny candy stick too. In the kitchen, I had prairie munchies including Ma's homemade muffins, Freshly baked bread, freshly churned butter (not really, but who knew!!), milk straight from the cow. I used my computer to make signs to place by the food.
My daughter dressed in a red calico dress, apron and bonnet, and we had bonnets (purchased over the years from various places) and aprons (used in a previous school play!) for each girl, and the one boy had a cowboy hat. My husband wore a hat, suspenders and boots and carried a fiddle, and I had on my dress and bonnet too.
I recorded (over and over!) the theme music to "Little House on the Prairie" TV show to play while everyone arrived. While waiting for all to arrive, the children entertained themselves with a Prairie Crossword puzzle and word search booklet I made, using Discovery channel's online puzzlemaker.
When all arrived, I started (as I always do) by reading a story - "A Little House Birthday", one of the My First Little House picture books. The craft was making a candle and votive holder - we placed a wick inside beeswax and rolled it, then used paint markers to decorate a glass votive and placed the candle inside.
Games included checkers (an authentic pioneer game)and marbles. Because it was a gorgeous day, we went outside to play pig's bladder! I read to them the passage in "Little House in the Big Woods" about Laura and Mary using a pig's bladder as a balloon - then gave them clear balloons to play with. We also took a walk through the "big Woods" behind our house, down to the creek!
When we returned, we had cupcakes - I downloaded and printed small pictures of various little House books and added a toothpick to stick in each cupcake. We all blew out our own candles that we made earlier after singing Happy Birthday. We did a little square dancing to fiddle music, too!
The treat bags were Little House chapter books wrapped in gingham tissue paper, along with a Dover Pioneer Girl paper doll. They were tied with raffia, and a Little Town on the Prairie pencil (available from the DeSmet Memorial Society) was tucked inside. It was really like traveling back into the 1800's.
Nice project to do together
