Plan an Easy ABC Party for the Kids

Looking for a party idea for birthdays, summer or anytime during the year? Celebrate the letters with an Alphabet Party. Parties are wonderful, not only for the festivities, but also for their planning and preparation. They are learning experiences in themselves. Children can help by making invitations, decorations and easy food preparation. Also think about alphabet games and make-and-take craft projects. The list is endless with this theme. Here are a few of my ideas to begin.

Start with an invitation...

Type and reproduce the following wording for a potluck alphabet party where kids and their families are invited. This turned into one of our favorite parties and enjoyed by all. After you prepare the sheets, invite your kids to decorate the papers with sticker letters, letter rubbings, letter collages or any other way to produce alphabet letters in a decorative fashion.

You are invited to join our family for a potluck Alphabet Party. Your letter is ______ (fill in a different letter per family). Please bring something to eat that begins with this letter or in the shape of this letter (cookies, pretzels, etc). We will be sharing food and fun, so please join us. RSVP by _____ (fill in date).

You can also challenge families to find clothes and colors that start with their letter to make a festive outfit. At the party, pass out name tags with just the person's name initial drawn on with a marker. This makes a great ice breaker game as children and parents try to guess the other guests' names by just seeing the first letter.

Plan some fun and easy decorations...

Begin by making letter chains and hanging these on the walls or streaming from the ceiling. Decorate strips of paper with alphabet letters and tape or staple the loops together. Use large foam letters to spell WELCOME. Kids enjoy making letter collages by cutting alphabet letters from magazines or catalogs or photo collages where the pictures represent the specific alphabet letter. Let them glue these letters on colorful construction paper. Use these collages as placemats by covering the paper with self-adhesive clear plastic for durability. Place these on the dining tables.

Games are entertaining and educational...

Spend time during your party with games both the children and parents will enjoy. As everyone arrives with an initial name tag, ask them all to group themselves according to the alphabet letter of their initial. Everyone will have fun seeing who else has a name with his or her letter. Linda will love to know that there are people named Larry, Lisa, Leonard, Laura and Lyla who share their initial. Bring on a cheering squad with, "Give me a B or K and so on", having the guests shouting out their group's initial. What a rousing way to start a party!

Children will love to play letter telephone. Have everyone sitting in a circle. Have the first player start by picking a letter (scrabble letters work well) from a box, but not showing it to anyone. Have this person whisper the letter to the person sitting next to him. That person whispers to the next player and on and on. No one is allowed to look at the letter until the message gets to the last person in the circle who announces what was whispered. He then looks at the letter in his hand to see if it is correct. Continue to play as long as the attention is there.

The next game equals as a craft as well. Pass out a sheet of paper to each child that has a coconut tree printed on it. Ask one parent to read the classic alphabet story, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by John Archambault to the group. Have alphabet stickers on the table and let the kids place a letter on the tree as your read the story. Provide crayons to finish the artwork. The children can take this paper home with them after the party.

The trick for a successful party is having a theme. An ABC (alphabet) party is a great theme for any time of the year, guests of any age and gives you many options for food and entertainment.

Source: personal experience

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