Rain Party!

Randomly Chiquita asked me for a rain party the other day.  No idea where this came from.  It's been crazy hot without a cloud in sight for weeks!  She asked a few times, maybe more than a few times, so I decided, why not?  We didn't have anything scheduled the next day so I started googling "rain party for kids" and got a bunch of ideas together for a rain play date/party.

We started the party with "Jump in the Puddle" kind of a play on musical chairs with no winners or losers that I got from a great article on  gather.com.  They had the game with a hula hoop, which I didn't have, so I improvised.  I had a huge piece of blue corduroy that I cut in a circle for our puddle.  I put on some great music (from Daria) and they ran around the "puddle" until the music stopped and they all jumped in.  They loved this game so much we ended up playing two more times during the play date.

Then we painted with "clouds" (shaving cream).  I got out my big white board for them to paint.  Chiquita has done this lots of time in the bath before with colored shaving cream but we left it white this time.  Pretty soon we covered the white board and a little play table and some of the kid's faces!  This was a perfect transition to our next activity!

I just got out a sprinkler (attached to a hose) and gave the kids umbrellas (I'd asked their moms to bring one for each kid, but we have a few extras for those who forgot or couldn't find them.  As well as dancing in the "rain" the kids washed off all the shaving cream.  I even set out the white board and table to be washed off (anything to make clean up easier).

I decided to make blue jello topped with whipped cream "clouds" for a snack.  I didn't have any blue jello in the house but that did not deter me!  I took apple juice and added LOTS of blue food coloring (it was still slightly turquoise) and unflavored gelatin.  In retrospect I would have made the apple juice more concentrated or used a stronger flavored juice because the jello was kind of bland, but the kids all loved the whipped cream!

We started a cute umbrella craft from the gather.com article I mentioned above.  We painted paper plates with the intention of cutting the plates in half, adding slits and handles for little 3-d umbrellas.  While we were waiting for the paint to dry we got out the kiddie pool and had so much fun that everyone had to go home before we got back to our umbrellas.  No one was sad, except that it was time to go home.

Do your kids every ask for unusual parties?