Party Ideas – Oktoberfest

oktoberfest-party-ideas-decorations

Blue and white represents the German state of Bavaria. You can also use red, yellow, and black which are the colors of the German flag. The other most obvious theme for a German Octoberfest would be BEER. Use beer bottles to decorate the tables and fill beer steins with flowers for decorations.

Check out some of the ideas from our Beer tasting party blog post too. With a few small changes you can easily blend the two party styles together.

Oktoberfest-Party ideas from PopSugsar

Free Printable Beer Labels

Pretzel Beer Garland

Octoberfest Facts –

Oktoberfest is the world’s largest fair held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is 16-day festival running from late September to the first weekend in October with more than 6 million people from around the world attending the event every year. To the locals, it is not called Oktoberfest, but “die Wiesn”, after the colloquial name of the fairgrounds (Theresienwiese) themselves. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture, having been held since 1810. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations, modeled after the original Munich event. (Source Wikipedia.com)

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?