Winnie The Pooh Day Party

My coworker and I just co-ran a Winnie The Pooh Day Party to celebrate A.A. Milne's birthday.

We started by reading Winnie-the-Pooh's Colors, followed by a brief discussion of all our favorite Pooh characters (Tiger was the overall favorite).

While the book definitely went over really well, I sort of wish I'd taken more time to find a Winnie-the-Pooh book that was more of a story and less of an interactive activity. It's always fun to have the kids name colors (and of course it makes them feel smart), but it may have been more fun to start off with more of a story book and less of a lesson. Either way, these were a cute and easy-to-please bunch.

After the book, we played a game of "Pin the Tail on Eeyore." This is when having two librarians in the room came most in handy-- we forgot the tape. Both of us! Between the two of us, we managed to help the kids write their names on the tails, blindfold them, and give each tail a dot of glue. Some kids weren't into the blindfold so we wound up ditching it about halfway through and my coworker just covered the kids eyes with her hands. They seemed to like this better. This was the (pretty impressive) result:

We gave all the kids a bunch of Winnie-the-Pooh stickers as prizes. We overbought so we were able to be overgenerous, which was not a bad thing.

Next up, the kids colored top-halves and bottom-halves of Winnie-the-Pooh faces (which I drew out, copied onto cardstock, and pre-cut for them). Then we glued the pieces onto red lunch bags (these, from Oriental Trading) to make hand puppets.

The kids liked doing this probably best of all. During this time we put on music (I had pre-made a playlist but, woops, forgot to sync it up to the iPod. I wound up just putting the whole iPod on shuffle though. It was fine). As the kids were finishing up their craft, my coworker and I came around with snacks: Goldfish crackers and fruit snacks (leftover from the Noon Year's Eve Party) served on cute Pooh Bear napkins and water out of matching Pooh Bear cups.

What worked the best: The craft. It was good.

What worked the least: The forgetting of the tape, although glue really did work just fine in the end. And, although the book worked for the kids and parents, I sort of wish I'd chosen a different one.