“Happy Birthday” Play!

So, if you follow Twodaloo on Twitter and/or Facebook, you know that my precious twins turned TWO yesterday! While we have postponed their official birthday party until February (I need a chance to get organized and recover from the holidays), we still managed to have a fabulous day with some fun, low-key play activities.

How many times have you been to a little one’s birthday party only to witness the birthday boy/girl having a complete meltdown during the happy birthday song? One way to help your little one become comfortable and even excited about this ritual is to do some role-play activities before the big day. One way I was able to do this was by incorporating birthday cupcakes into our sensory play the day before…we simply filled cupcake liners with pinto beans, used pipe cleaner pieces as “candles,” and voila! Pretend cupcakes! Then we practiced singing the birthday song and blowing out the candles, although in this picture Sydney appears to be snorting them instead. What can I say-she’s enthusiastic!

On the day of the twins’ birthday, we started out right with an early morning trip to the donut shop with Daddy before work. Then, we came back home for some fun activities on our new light panel.

First I introduced some sparkly squish bags (plastic baggies filled with glitter glue and taped shut). The twins used various shaped objects from our playroom to stamp and squish the goo around in the bags. Nothing about these bags was particularly birthday-ish, except for the glitter. Who doesn’t like a little sparkle on their birthday?

When the squish bags began losing their appeal, I introduced these simple “birthday cakes” made of shapes cut from translucent dividers. The flames on the candles are random gems pulled from my crafty stash. I got the idea for using dividers as inexpensive light table shapes at Still Parenting. The faux flames were the sleeper hit of the activity, and Sydney kept pointing to them and saying “Fiya! Fiya!” (fire). And then Will would chime in and make a siren noise (you know, for a fire truck…). Toddlers are a strange and wonderful species.

At this point it was time for Mommy to make dinner, so our fabulous and fun Mimi occupied them by helping them make special birthday hats for everyone using paper plates, crayons, and animal stamps.

Here is Granddad with his paper plate hat peeking out from under a dapper fedora from our dress-up bin.

Not to be outdone, our beloved Mimi making a fashion statement with Will.

Sydney wore her hat for about five seconds before exchanging it for her current favorite from our play stash. I kid you not, she has worn this hat for three days straight. She even tried to wear it in the bathtub the other night!

Will decided to forgo the hat altogether. Eating ice cream cake is no laughing matter!

After cake and one present each (a new book), we happily called it a night. It was a perfect, kid-focused way to celebrate their special day. I’ll post details on our family party in February…we’re doing a “Little Chef” theme!

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