Case in point: here is the inspiration for one of our party activities
and here is how it actually turned out
You will notice I did not get out my jigsaw and fiberboard to create the cutouts. In fact, I did not even bother to cover up the copy on cereal boxes. Minus 1 for me, I should have at least glued some construction paper on the back of the boxes.
Anyway, if you are looking for the gold standard of Busytown Birthday parties, check out this post over on stitch/craft. It's a really beautiful party. But if you are looking for some ideas that the average, lazier, Type-B parent can pull off you have come to the right place.
We had our party outside at a local park, so we didn't have a lot of decorations. We had the "town" and figures for the kids to play with. I photocopied the pages out of What Do People Do All Day and The Adventures of Lowly Worm, glued them to the back of cereal boxes and stuck them on the end of the table. I purchased the figures online; we had Huckle, Sally, Lowly, Mr. Fixit, Hilda Hippo, Pig Will and Bananas Gorilla. I put out a few of our Richard Scarry books so that guests who weren't familiar with Busytown would have some context. We had crayons and coloring pages from the Hello Busytown! coloring book for guests as well. Although I must admit none of these activities were nearly as popular as the Stomp Rockets that we decided to bring along at the last minute. No connection to Busytown, but the kids were lining up to launch them while the coloring pages blew around in the wind.
When it was time for cake we surprised our guests with a mystery. We gathered everyone around the table and then opened the cake box to reveal not a cake, but a picture of Goldbug with a note that read
It's the Mystery of the Missing Birthday Cake!
It's a Busytown Mystery just for you! To find your cake follow the clues!
For your first clue, ask where would Lowly go? He likes to play tic, tac toe
At first the kids were a little confused, but we had rehearsed this game with M a few weeks prior to the party so he knew what was going on. He led all of his friends over to the Tic Tac Toe board in the park where a friend of ours was waiting with a picture of Lowly and another clue. The kids had to go to 4 different locations in the park and eventually ended up back at the table where we had the actual cake waiting for them. I wasn't sure if this game would work, but it ended up being lots of fun and I cannot tell you how cute it was to see a line of 20 kids running around the park chanting "Cake! Cake!"
My mother-in-law is an excellent and adventurous cake maker and volunteered to make us a Huckle cake. Since we were at the park and didn't have a cooler big enough to hide the cake she wrapped it as if it was a present and hid it in plain view. When the lid was removed the sides fell down to reveal the cake. (My mother-in-law probably could pull off an ohdeedoh worthy party).
In our favor bags we had mini magnifying glasses, little notebooks that I decorated with Busytown stickers (which came with the Hello Busytown! coloring book), party blowers and pretzels. M loved his party and even his friends who had never heard of Busytown had a great time.
