Little Bear Birthday Party

by Mike
(Glendale, CA)

Our son loves Little Bear, so for his third birthday we decided to have a party with a Little Bear theme. When we began planning for this party, the first thing we realized was that there is not a lot of Little Bear themed merchandise currently available, so much of what we found we got from Ebay sellers, and the rest we came up with on our own. If you love Little Bear like we do, we hope that you will find some ideas that can help you in your party planning!

We sent handmade invitations for the party using a card to which we added our party information. Inside we wrote,

Everyone Will Be There
You Too Join The Group
Hen, Duck, and Emily
We'll Be Making Birthday Soup!

Because we weren't sure if everyone was familiar with Little Bear, along with the invitations, we created and sent handmade keepsake booklets that told all about him and his friends.

To decorate for the party, we found a Little Bear tablecloth and mylar balloon on Ebay. The day before the party, we went to the park and collected maple leaves in different colors. This is similar to one of the episodes in Little Bear where they play with leaves and Little Bear even presses one in a book -- we did that too! For decoration, we paired two to three leaves in different colors together and tied them with hemp cord like a garland to bring in the forest feel. We also displayed the personalized honey jars that went home as favors on the mantle surrounding a Little Bear toy.

One activity at the party was making "Birthday Soup." This was an idea taken from the story. Of course we had to have our Little Bear make his own Birthday Soup as Little Bear does on his birthday when he thinks Mother Bear forgot his birthday and did not make a cake.

Other activities included renting a bounce house for all the little bears to tumble around in, and having a pinata shaped like a bee hive, which I made myself.

To eat, we ordered Chinese food from Happy Panda. We made a sign that said,

Little Bear's Cousin, Panda Bear,
has prepared today's delicious food.

Mama Bear has baked the cake
and prepared the delicious sweets.

The cake was a picture that we took to the bakery, and they printed it on the cake, not at all expensive. Of course it was a chocolate cake as it's Little Bear's favorite.

Finally, our guests went home with their own Little Bear honey favors. We used real honey and customized the labels with our party information. Then we tied on ribbons for color.

It was a fun party! Hope you get some ideas that work for you. Good luck!


** For some additional party pictures, see this link in picasa:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Tarakhchyans/LittleBearBirthday?feat=directlink