A Winter Wonderland Kindergarten Party

This year, I have the pleasure of planning the classroom parties for "Class Dixon's" Kindergarten class.  My first BIG responsibility was the Christmas party. I started planning the party the second week in November. I titled the party "Winter Wonderland" and tried to organize the party around the adorably, cute snowman Olaf!!! To start the party off right, I asked Ms. Dixon to play the FROZEN soundtrack aloud, for all the students to hear.  I had NO idea, while planning this party, that the plan was, earlier that day, for the entire school to watch the movie FROZEN. How perfectly arranged was that, for our party?

Elsa and Anna also made an appearance.

The parent involvement has been incredible this year.  Out of 21 students, I think at least 18 of them volunteered both their time and donated money towards the expense of the party needs.

First, I created a menu.  I remembered at the Halloween party, this year, we threw out a TON of food and the waste really bothered me.  So... I made the menu items "fun" and "cute", but I simplified it a bit.  Here's what we ate:

Snowman Kabobs: These snowman kabobs were designed and created by Ms. Heather Wingfield.  She used powdered donuts, m&ms, fruit roll ups, cake dye, and kabob sticks to form these little guys.

Santa Fruit Hats: Designing a fruit around "Olaf" was hard.  So Ms. Vivian Sowder decided to make these cute Santa hats out of strawberries, grapes, and marshmallows.  

Snowman String Cheese: Ms. Heather Wells volunteered to make these adorable snowman string cheese. They came out even cuter than the ones I asked her to make.

Melted Snow Drink: I signed up to bring bottled water, but of course I wanted to coordinate it with our Winter Wonderland theme.  I wrapped the water bottles in heart shaped scrapbook card stock and stuck a 3-Dimensional snowflake sticker on each bottle.

"Frozen" Punch: Ms. Amy Troiler signed up to bring blue Hawaiian punch.  I found these adorable, HARD plastic cups at Five Below.  I purchased 21 of them.  They were $2.00 a piece and I wasn't sure if we were going to actually get to keep them, to use, but the cash donations were so kind, we had enough left over to cover the cost of these cups.  Each child went home with an Olaf drinking cup.  

Some of the other items that parents signed up to bring were pretzel sticks (snowman arms), white cheddar cheese balls (snowballs), and carrot sticks with ranch (carrot noses).  I loved that we had a sweet, a salty, a protein, a fruit, and a veggie. Just enough....

All of the food was served on Olaf paper goods.  I also found these at Five Below and Ms. Sarah Perkins was kind enough to purchase them for the class party!

And here are the Kindergarteners enjoying the Winter Wonderland menu.

Of course we had a craft planned.  I shopped and designed the cute "Melted Snowman" ornament for the kids to bring home as a keepsake. I'm doing this a little out of order... I had already posted on this because "The Stir" wanted me to submit some snowman crafts for them to share on their website. This will be my 3rd feature on their website.  So exciting!

Games: 

You've got to have games to play at a party, right?  The first game we played was "Inflatable Antler Toss"  Although it didn't really go along with Olaf, it did coincide with the character, in the movie, "Sven".  My first plan was to blow up these Antlers and surprise Darren with the task of being the moose, but he REFUSED.  So, the next best victim was the students' teacher, Ms. Dixon. LOL!  She was a good sport about it. 

The kids had fun playing this game, but they were all so excited to have a turn, so it was a tad hectic trying to decide who got to go next.  LOL! I am really not sure how Ms. Dixon maintain's classroom order.  Imagine (21) 5 year olds in one room. Ahhhhhhh!

After a while, the Antlers were slowly deflating.  Such a bummer!!!  I wound up returning that dud!

 The next game was "Pin The Carrot Nose On Olaf".  

A special thank you to our local YMCA who allowed me to borrow Olaf, for the chosen game! I just printed carrot noses off of google images and made sure the kids used a light weight tape. I didn't want to ruin Olaf. I promised to return him flawless.  

The kids really loved this game.  Again, they all begged to go "next".  It's the classic syndrome of "ME FIRST".  You can see the laughter as Lilah tried to pin her carrot nose NO WHERE near Olaf.  Silly girl!!

I took the class in groups of 5.  So there was 4 sets of 5 students.  I had 5 prizes.  The student who was the closes to Olaf's nose, won a prize.  Not EVERYONE won a prize.  Lilah was brought to tears when she didn't win a prize. Sigh... that's the HARD part about being the class mommy.  Had I not been there, I highly doubt she would have cried.

Here were the prizes the students won: First, An OLAF BOOK with STICKERS.

 A Snowman Hand Warmer.  

 A Snowman Wooly Willy

 A Light-Up Yazzle Snowman Olaf.

 A Snowman Necklace Kit.

At the very end of the party, all the children were presented with "Ty" Olaf plush dolls to take home. These dolls could NOT have been possible without the kind, cash donations from many of the parents.  

This plush toy beats a baggie of trinkets that will get lost or thrown away, eventually, if you have a mommy who doesn't let you save anything.  LOL!  Yes, I just told on myself.

I cannot thank the parents enough for ALL of their help!  I have had and heard of horror stories where the "classroom parent" had to do most everything on his/her own, both financially and physically, and that is really tiresome and frustrating. Class Dixon's parents ROCK!