Teddy bears’ picnic

Create a Teddy Bears Picnic for your child’s next birthday party. Use these ideas for teddy themed party invitations, decorations, food, games and prizes.

If you go down to the words today… You’re sure to get a sur-prise!

Everybody loves a Teddy Bears Picnic, especially pre-schoolers.

t’s an easy party to create no matter how many little guests you have running around, and both boys and girls enjoy partying with their favourite bear.

You can even host a teddy bears’ picnic just for fun, it doesn’t have to be a birthday idea. Just have your preschooler invite their friends over, and ask them all to bring their teddys. It’s great fun to have in the sun!

Teddy Bears Picnic Invitation Ideas

• Use the words from the classic Teddy Bears Picnic song, and change them around to include details about your child’s party. For a copy of the song visit www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/teddy/teddypicnic.html
• Cut a card into the shape of a teddy bear, or make a teddy bear mask out of a paper plate and write the invitation on the back.
• Cut out lots of different food shapes and on each one write a different part of the invitation. For example: Cut out an apple from red card, and write on it – Time: 2pm – 4pm. Put all your pieces of food into an envelope, and colour it to look like a picnic basket. When your guests receive their invitations, they’ll have to put the whole picnic together to find out what’s happening.

Teddy Bears Picnic Decorations

• Make lots of newspaper trees and transform your lounge room into a forest. Simply roll 5 or 6 sheets of newspaper into a long pole, and wrap tape around several places on the bottom half to keep it secure. From the opposite end, cut down the newspaper pole to form strips. Bend the strips down and waalah, you have instant palm trees!You can do the same thing using green crepe paper, or simply spray paint your newspaper trees in green and brown.
• Beg, borrow or steal (just kidding!) as many teddy bears as you can, and jam pack your house with them all. After all, the song says “Every bear that ever there was…”
• Use black polythene, black building paper, or black fabric to turn your front door into the entrance of a cave. Add a couple of big rocks and some pot plants to each side, and string cotton wool around the edges to make cobwebs. To take the ‘scary’ factor away, you might want to add a big sign that says ‘FRIENDLY Bear Sleeps Here’.Teddy Bears Picnic Games and Activities

• Have a table with paper plates, crayons, scissors, string and tape, and have every child make their own bear mask when they arrive.
• Before the party, make some bear finger puppets by gluing pictures of bears onto card, and attaching a cardboard loop to the back. There are plenty of pictures on the internet you can download, or colour copy some from kids books or magazines. You can make them famous bears like Winnie the Pooh, or simply different sorts of bears like polar, koala, panda and grizzly.When each child arrives, give them a finger puppet to get them started. Tell them there is a whole family of bear puppets hidden in the woods, and they should keep an eye out for them during the party. Make enough puppets so that every child can create a family of 5 on their hand.Tip: Make a note of where you have hidden all the bears, as there’s bound to be one or two children who need some help at the end.
• Let the children paint their own picnic plates using oven bake ceramic paints. Simply purchase a cheap white dinner set (you can get them from The Warehouse for $10 -$15), and let them paint like crazy. To fire the plate, you simply bake them in your kitchen oven. Oven bake ceramic paints can be purchased from any good craft store, and cost between $25 – $30 for a starter set of 6.
• Play good old fashioned picnic games like egg and spoon, sack races, three legged run and the wheelbarrow race.

For new twists on old favourites try:

• Pin the Nose (or the Bow Tie) on the Teddy Bear
• Pass the Parcel wrapped in picnic blankets or table cloths, rather than paper.
• Musical Picnic Stools

Teddy Bears Picnic Party Food

• Have your food picnic style on a big red and white checked tablecloth. Bring all the teddy bears outside to join in.
• Ice cupcakes with chocolate icing and sprinkle them with chocolate hail to make fur. Add a black liquorice nose, pebbles for eyes, and a couple of chocolate buttons for ears. Cup cakes now become bear cakes.
• We all know bears love honey sandwiches! Buy a few different types of honey (comb, clover, runny….) and let the children make their own sandwiches using a honey they have never tried. Very messy but lots of fun.
• Use disposable boxes or plastic containers to make every child a picnic box of their own. (Look at your supermarket for ‘Glad’ containers. They’re perfect for this!) Fill their picnic box with pre-packaged snacks like chippies, muesli bars, Cookie Bear bikkies, cheese and crackers, or whatever takes your fancy. This way there’s no mess, and no waste. If something isn’t eaten, it simply goes home with the child in their picnic box.

Teddy Bears Picnic Costumes

Dress up in clothes that match the bear of your choice, (black or brown for grizzly, white for polar, or grey for koala), and paint your face to match. You could staple or stitch clumps of coloured wool to your clothes to make fur, or stuff pillows up your shirt to get a round teddy bear tummy. Ears can easily be made from cardboard and attached to a headband.

Teddy Bear costumes are easy to get from hire shops, but be in quick….remember every bear that ever there was will want one!

Hosting a Teddy Bears Picnic Indoors

You can easily re-create the woods for your teddy bears picnic indoors with these simple and clever ideas.

First, decorate the area with a selection of artificial moss and greenery to create a feeling of the outdoors.

An elegant and clever idea for a decorative centrepiece is to sit the teddy bears – mixing and matching all the great pastel colours – around a high-tea style cupcake or cake stand and write ‘teddy bears’ on bottles to keep the theme going.

Here’s a great example from the Koch blog:

Teddy Bears Picnic Prizes and Loot Bags

• Instead of a traditional loot bag, make a ‘Tom Sawyer’ style swag. Tie all the party loot in a checked picnic cloth or serviette, and tie it to the end of a stick for them to carry home.
• Cut the bottom off plastic soft drink bottles, and attach a cardboard handle across the top to make mini picnic baskets. Line the basket with a serviette and fill it with your party loot.
• Look for cheap bear themed prizes like gummy bears, stickers, stamps, rubbers and magnets. You can purchase cute teddy bear ornaments from emporium type stores for just a few dollars.

For more great birthday ideas for little ones, check out our Preschoolers: Birthday section.