How to Plan a Back to School Party

Each year, as August comes to an end, kids have mixed emotions. Though the summer is drawing to an end, the excitement of a new school year is also building. Celebrate this anticipation with a back to school party.

Instructions

1. Kick off the theme with fun invitations. There are a number of ways to use this theme. Make report card-style invitations, or homework assignment style, where the kids' first assignment of the school year is to come to this party and have a great time. Other ways to use this theme on the invitations includes using graphics such as a large red apple, yellow school bus, or #2 pencil cutouts. To take advantage of school supply sales, buy inexpensive notebooks or note pads and write invitation on cover or the front page. Tape or tie a fun pencil to the invitation.

2. Decorate using the primary colors of red, yellow and blue, with the addition of black. Choose balloons or streamers in these colors, or even the kids' school colors. Consider letting the kids help you decorate. Use large paper cut outs in the shapes of apples, school buses, numbers and letters real apples, big piles of books, globes and maps. Feature a large chalkboard and write a fun message, such as "Back to School Time!".

3. Plan fun games and activities appropriate for the kids' ages. Ideas include 20 questions, bingo, dodge ball, drawing games, Simon says, twister, relay races (such as a get ready for school race pack lunch bag, collect homework, put on back pack, run to "school house"), a paper airplane contest, a back-to-school wordsearch or school-themed pictionary or charades. If the kids are old enough, send them on a neighborhood scavenger hunt for school-related items.

4. Show a classic school-themed video to older children. Ideas include "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "The Breakfast Club," "Never Been Kissed," "Billy Madison," "School of Rock" or "Dead Poet's Society."

5. Serve fun foods packaged in lunch boxes or lunch bags. Include the following lunch box favorites: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, string cheese, pudding or applesauce cups, grapes, baby carrots, a chocolate chip cookie, juice boxes or school bus cupcakes.

6. Give fun party favors that can double as new school supplies. Send the kids home with crayons pencils, erasers, notepads, folders, pens and glitter pens, stickers, stencils, pencil boxes and sharpeners, sticky notes, rulers and paints.