Starting School Party

Our five year old Thomas will be starting school in August.  Having three older brothers, he has been waiting for the time to arrive.  As it approaches he is getting cold feet. Just recently he has decided he would like to stay in Kindergarten after all!! So to get him warmed up on the idea again I am going to throw a 'starting school party' with his little German friends who will be transferring to the same school as he will.  We will be on holiday in England for 2 out of the 3 weeks holiday they get from Kindergarten - in a little boys life, that is a looooonnnnngggg time! This will be a good way of getting them together before so that we can strengthen their friendships.

The apple invitations have been made and given out you can read about that here.  Here's a quick look at how they turned out.

I've been gathering ideas on Pinterest.

http://pinterest.com/pin/139400550936820136/

I am thinking these would be fun to have as centre pieces and i could have a line hanging across the room and I could peg up their art creations.  I am only going to have 6 or 7 kids attending ... I think I can monitor that many so it doesn't transfer onto my white walls.  =)

This idea has to be my favourite ....

http://pinterest.com/pin/139400550936820082/

This morning I finished the jam that was in a similar shaped jar to this ... so now I have to buy more jam for the jars!! =) I already have the straws.

I'm in the process of making some bunting ... I'll post more on that as soon as I have time!! 

Have you had any successful starting school parties and would like to share your ideas?  

Gummy worm apple invitations - starting school party

I have found some lovely pins on Pinterest for starting school parties and it sparked me into action!! Our youngest son will have his first day of school in a German school and I thought it would be great to get him and his friends together and have a 'Starting School Party' at home.

I went through a lot of 'shall I, shan't I's?' But in the end I was brave enough to GO FOR IT!  The main concern was not being able to communicate with those cute little German kids who frown at me when I try to have a conversation with them.  It's a good indicator and sometimes alarm bell telling me that I need to try harder with my language skills.  Well to get rid of that worry I enlisted the help of one of one of the mums to take care of the instruction for any games that we will play. Easy peasy ... !! PHEW!!

Well I have gone with the theme of apples so far.

I just wanted to tell you quickly about our invitations.

I wanted to do an apple invitation with the party information on the card leaves.  Cute eh?  Discussing this with my sister in law and she suggested adding a gummy worm for fun!!  I loved this idea.

I searched high and low for gummy worms ... I almost gave up!!  I eventually found some ... 

Here come the tips!!  

• I used a cork screw to make the hole so that it was deep enough to keep the worm in place.  Screw in the cork screw and pull it out so that it brings out the apple from the hole with it.  
• use a drop of lemon juice so that this exposed part of the apple doesn't turn brown.
• IMPORTANT TO KNOW!!  I prepared these the night before, ready to give out at Kindergarten the next morning.  When I looked at them, the acid in the lemon juice had reduced the gummy worm to a goo! I am not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.  The goo seemed to act like a glue to keep the gummy worm in place.  =) 

Here's how they looked before we went out of the door.

For hygiene reasons I decided that I would put them into individual bags to give them out because those little fingers in Kindergarten are attracted to the good stuff .... the gummy worms and not the apples; thus I didn't want all of the other children touching them to destroy my work of art  the food after having their fingers up their noses and making the party goers sick!! 

The invitations went down a treat - the mums giggled seeing the gummy worms in there and the children loved eating the gummy worm ... not sure if they continued on and ate the apple too - I hope so!! =)

More to follow as the preparations continue and the day arrives ... only 8 more sleeps!!