Simple ideas for arty birthday party for 5 year old...

[Orinoco]

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Lots of ideas here (click on 'newsletters') or go to Baker Ross and see what they have that takes her/your fancy.

Baker Ross.

Keep it simple. The kids will 'freestyle' anyway unless closely supervised. Have a look at baker ross for ideas.

Pom poms? You could try basic t shirt painting too but you will probably need to warn parents first.

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Very nice site here which you can get as a free newsletter. Click on 'newsletters' at the left and you can search the previous editions
www.kidscraftweekly.com/index.html

you'll need to plan out how long the crafts will take and how many you'll do, also what you'll do in between and when you'll eat. Maybe you could have a sort of 'craft fair' type thing where there are lots of little tables set up and kids can go round in the order they please doing the ones that take their fancy. You'll need an adult helper at each table tho. Then after a set time you could stop for food and cake and then play games.

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Decorating wooden spoons to make dolls?

Wool for hair, can buy stick-on eyes from ELC/Hobbycraft, then scraps of fabric, ribbon etc for clothes.

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rich tea biscuits + icing tubes = edible masterpieces

DD went to a party a while ago where they decorated there own (already made) fairy cake and then made their own sandwich!! It was so simple but so effective, they loved it and what is more they all ate their sandwichs!

We had an "arty party" for DD1's fifth.

We did use Baker Ross, so these might not suit you, but here's what we did anyway:

Decorate your own mug (not the glass painting ones, but the ones where you just draw a picture on a bit of paper and slot it into a plastic mug)

Decorate your own badge (similar - circles of paper which you decorate and put in a clip-together badge case).

Foam sun visors, decorated with self-adhesive foam letters and shapes.

Colour-in flying bugs (like model planes, but bug shaped).

Those were all from the catalogue - sorry haven't got time to find pages.

We also provided a fairy cake per child and a load of icing and cake decorating stuff, so they could decorate their own cake, which they had with their tea.

Of the above, the DIY mugs, hats and badges were a hit - the flying bugs less so, but they were REALLY cheap!! The cakes were definitely the most exciting - and also the easiest from my point of view.

Be warned, you do need a decent range of things to do. Some of them finish a craft like lightening, while others will spend all afternoon painstakingly decorating one item.

V cheap packs of plain fairy cakes in tesco if you want to do mcdreamy's idea.

Cardboard crowns to decorate with whatever takes their fancy, then have a parade.

For dd's 4th party we printed out masks - dora, gruffalo etc -from the internet for people to decorate, which went down well.

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Can I just add from recent bitter experience for this age group:

NOT glue -- use self-adhesive things instead
NOT beads -- they go everywhere unless you are really, really quick at tying up the ends!

Have fun

LOL pussinwellies - in retrospect, I now remember that that is why we did so many things with stickers and pens. The thought of 12 children wielding pritt stick in my living room was too much to cope with!