Party Idea – Beach Party

Party Idea - Beach

This Beach party idea is a little extra special as it’s was for my little boy 🙂 The photos are looking a little old as this party was in 2009.

We created a Beach/Pool party for his 1st birthday party and it was lots of fun, even the adults had fun.

I printed surfboards for cupcake toppers and used flip flop shoe keyrings , We also printed off some shark fins to use as cupcake toppers. I laminated the printouts so they were firm enough to stick into the cupcake and could be washed and re-used if required.

Party Guests were able to keep the shoe keyring from their cupcake if they wanted to and every child got a plastic beach bucket and an inexpensive beach towel to take home.

A beach party would not be complete without a sandpit and giant beach ball so we added those too.

The party food was all about sand, so I used my food mixer to crush graham crackers for the sand, you could use any type of light brown biscuit.

The fruit sticks were a huge hit and I added a Shark Gummy to the top of the lolly sticks.

I decorated the table with thin bird netting which was very inexpensive and small plastic sand molds.

We dressed up in Lifeguard shirts and the kids just wore swimmers.

Beach Party Cupcakes

Beach Sand Pit

Beach Umbrellas

Bucket of chips

Beach themed food

Beach party decorations

Hot Chips

Sandcastle cake

In our continuing exploration of lesser known holidays, let’s take a look at Terry Fox Day, which is probably one you know if you’re Canadian.

Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete who had a leg amputated at age 18 because of cancer and then did a cross-country run to raise awareness and funding for cancer research. He was born July 28, 1958, and the first Monday in August is celebrated as Terry Fox Day in Manitoba.

Fox is considered a kind of folk hero in Canada despite the difficulties of traveling across Canada on foot (no one on his team spoke French, for example, the weather was often bad and cars would force him off the road) and the low number of donations at the beginning of his run. He ultimately had to end his run after 143 days and 3,339 miles, or 5,373 km, because his cancer had returned and spread to his lungs, but he raised $1.7 million, and a telethon a week after he ended his run raised $10.5 million.

Check out some Terry Fox quotes collected by My Little Desire. You can learn more in this video from CBC Kids, and listen to the Terry Fox song illustrated by a first grade class.

Twinkl has a bunch of Terry Fox related activities in both English and French, including an activity pack with a maze and word search, a coring challenge, a fact sheet and coloring page.

Most of the resources I could find were at Teachers Pay Teachers, but you can learn more about the activity pack for grades 1-3 that Mrs. Bremer’s Class has made, which tells his story and has kids write things they learned and discuss why they think he is a hero.

Creative Classroom Core has a few paid resources include writing activities, reading comprehension and a Terry Fox fact book.

That Fun Reading Teacher has a K-2 singalong with a differentiated reader and activity to teach kids about him.

You can also celebrate Terry Fox Day by talking about what makes a person a hero and who the kids in your home or classroom think of as heroes. And if you’re Canadian, there are Terry Fox runs in more than 650 communities in September, so you can make plans to participate or cheer on the runners to remember his legacy.

Have you read?