Anya's Animal Themed Birthday Party - Food & Fun

To make the menu sound more fun, I tried to give wild names to the dishes. Here's a peek at the menu :

1. Jungle juice - juice and soft drink
2. Beetle wings - potato chips
3. Animal crackers - mathri
4. Bhaloo cutlet - veg cutlet
5. Corn whale - corn bhel
6. Paw bhaji - pav bhaji
7. Wormy doodles - noodles
8. Dragon dhokla - khaman dhokla
9. Golden eggs - mini gulabjamuns
10. Forest fruitsticks - assorted fruits on a toothpick
and of course....a cake!

Jungle menu card

 I had these zebra and leopard stoles which came in handy. I just thew a transparent plasic table cover over these and a perfect backdrop for animal theme was ready.

I made these mathris in mini animal shapes. Kids loved it. 

In keeping with the theme, I planned following games:

Feeding the monkey: I covered a wire-planter with a paper cut-out of  monkey and hung it on a wall. A tennis ball, which was supposed to act as a banana was given to kids .They had to throw this 'banana' inside the 'monkey's mouth'.

Guess the animal: Anya's Papa prepared a slide show with different paw prints. Kids had to guess the respective animal. The one who gave the maximum correct answers won a prize. Even parents participated whole-heartedly and we had a lot of laughs with the guesses. 

Tip: A variation could be guessing animal sounds.

'Jungle me mangal' dance: This is a classic newspaper dance where each kid had to pair with her Mom and dance on a newspaper sheet without stepping out. As the music stopped, the sheet had to be folded into half and the dancing would resume. This brought out all animal instincts in participants and drew a lot of laughter. Both parents and kids had a gala time. I am a child at heart and always like to participate in games etc. So I was keen for games for parents too.

You are caged: This game was done twice - once for Moms and then for kids. It is a version of musical chairs. Moms formed a circle and had to pass a hoola-hoop through themselves before passing it on to the next Mom. Music played all along. When music stopped, whoever was left holding the hoola hoop had to do a small act and go out. The one who was left last, was the winner and got a prize. 

After repeating this game with kids, we headed to burst the pinata. Kids loved collecting candies, erasers, pencils and nuts.

We then had cake cutting followed by dinner.