Monkeys draw crowds at the zoo with their adorable appearance and funny behavior. A monkey-themed birthday party elicits smiles, laughter and plenty of monkey squeals from young guests. Incorporate the theme from the invitations through the actual party, including decorations, activities and cake. Does this Spark an idea?
Invitations
Incorporate bananas into the invitations. Fill decorative cellophane bags with candy bananas. Print the party details on a piece of card stock, cut out the cards with edging scissors and add a few monkey stickers to the bottom. Punch a hole in the information card and use a brown or yellow ribbon to tie it to the bag of candy bananas.
Decorations
Choose a color palette reminiscent of the jungle for the monkey birthday party decor. Incorporate greens, browns and yellows for balloons, streamers, plates, cups and plastic utensils. Use bunches of green, helium-filled balloons with brown ribbons holding them together to resemble trees. Paint a wall mural of a jungle scene on a piece of fabric or butcher paper. Use cardboard to create large cutouts of monkeys and bananas, using paint to add details. Use monkey stuffed animals and bunches of bananas to add the finishing touches to the party area.
Cake
Create a birthday cake that resembles a monkey's face. Use a round cake of any size as the monkey's head. Add two cupcakes as the ears. Add a dome-shaped cake on top of the circle cake to become the mouth and nose of the monkey. A dome cake can be baked in a Pyrex bowl or in a specially shaped dome cake pan. Ice the cake brown, adding facial features with frosting or with candy.
Entertainment
Host a banana-eating contest during the birthday party. Provide each contestant with a banana. Sound a horn or whistle to begin the contest. Award a prize to the child who can peel and eat his banana in the shortest amount of time. Supervise the children to make sure nobody chokes.
Set up a monkey mask center. Use paper plates as the basis for the masks. Allow guests to paint the paper plate or cover it with brown construction paper. Cut eye holes in the plates so the kids can see through. Cut out ears for the masks from brown construction paper and glue them to the top of the paper plate. Encourage the kids to add other facial details with paint or markers. Punch a hole in each side of the plate, tying a string or piece of elastic onto each hold to hold the mask in place.
Tags: birthday party, brown construction, brown construction paper, candy bananas, construction paper, dome cake, paper plate