Construction Party 

Invitations: Graphics or stickers of trucks and equipment.   Readers idea:  Cut invitation in shape of a tool-saw, hammer, hat etc. OR use a plastic saw. Front: !!!Caution!!!!  Construction Ahead Inside: Join us for a Construction Party- Help us Build some Birthday Fun Work Hours: time Construction Site:  Location Call the Site Boss to RSVP Dress to Work the Dirt

Construction party supplies from Birthday in a Box

Decorations:
  Decorate with caution tape instead of streamers.  Order a load of dirt, if you have room, or use an existing dirt pile, unused garden or sand box.
Table-Serve snacks from the back of a Tonka dump truck, other trucks, and upside down helmets.  Put a cone at each end of the table and run a piece of caution tape between the two.

Cake:
Dirt Cake-use crushed Oreo's on top for dirt.
Use Matchbox or other construction vehicles to decorate.  Small plastic signs, workers and cones.  Edge the cake with orange to look like construction tape.

Other Cake:
Construction Hat
Bake cake in Pyrex bowl.  Trim off bottom of cake to use as rim.  Frost in yellow and use black for lettering.  Write your child's name and BOSS on the front.

One more Cake: "dirt cake" in the back of a clean, indoor dump truck. Layers of crushed Oreo's, chocolate pudding, cream cheese mixture, and cool whip.  Top it with crushed Oreo's and miniature construction vehicles and men.  Serve it with a little shovel.

Truck Cake:  French crullers dipped in chocolate for the tires, pylon candles on top of roof. Cake idea and photo by Jen Verolla

Goodie Bags:
  Find hard plastic Hard Hats.   Fill them with small construction vehicles or mini tools.

Make a tool belt goodie bag out of paper sacks.   Fill with toy tools, Lego candies and tool stickers.

Ask a builders supply store for cloth tool belts.

Games and Activities:
Dirt pile play-  Let them at the dirt.  Have available all kids of construction vehicles, small shovels and buckets.

Dump Truck Relay-   Make teams and give each a Tonka like dump truck and a pile of rock.  Each team should have the same amount and the same size truck.  Have the first team member fill the truck with the rocks and push it to the designated "drop area."  They must drop the rocks and push the truck back for the next team member.  This person pushes the truck to the rocks and loads them up and brings them back to the next in line...continue until one team finishes first.  (you could do this with buckets, instead of trucks).

Shovel It- Need a large 2 bowls, cotton balls,  small plastic shovel, and  bandana.
Blindfold each person on their turn.  Have them scoop the cotton balls from one bowl into the other bowl using the shovel within a time limit.  Count the cotton balls and the one with the most in the other bowl wins.  You could give each child a prize determined by the number of cotton balls, if only one winner would create problems.

Lego building- Bring out the Lego's and let them build.

Hammer Nails-  Have nails preset into wood and let the kids (with LOTS of supervision) try their hand at hammering.

Build a ?-  Give the group all sorts of items to construct with:  boxes, egg cartons, cotton balls, utensils, books, cushions, etc.  These can be items built with glue or just put together in a room if you have room.  Lots of fun taking the cushions off the sofas, using tables and sheets to make little rooms.  Or use paper cups and plates...see who can build the highest!

Balloon Dig- Make a "balloon pit."  Stake off a 4'x4' area and using 4-2x2's and caution tape make a "playpen."  Fill the pen with balloons of the same color to signify rocks or dirt.  Deep within the balloons place one of a different color or one that has a child's name on it.  Let this child go into the pen and find their balloon.   Inside it should have a prize then exit and pop their balloon.

Fix it Table - Have all sorts of old appliances etc on a table top with tools that the kids can use to open them up.

Build it - Find an inexpensive "kit" that has items to build something simple...tool caddy.

Construction Lotto:  From the Internet, print pictures that have a construction theme (e.g. excavators, safety vests, cement mixer trucks, safety cones, men at work signs, hard hats, tools). Make sure the pictures are different from each other (e.g. don't use an excavator that is similar to the backhoe and if some of the guests may not have an extensive knowledge of construction, don't choose things that are too hard). The Mack Truck home page is great, so is John Deere and some of the safety equipment companies: Atlantic Mills, Nutmeg Utility Products or just search using construction-related words. Print enough pictures for about half of the party guests. Then glue the pictures to an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper, so that each guest will have a unique combination of six pictures on their paper. Make a list of all the pictures in a random order. Find poker chips or small lids for tokens/markers. Tell the guests:  You all have cards with pictures of construction things on them.   Some of the pictures on your cards are the same as the others' and some pictures are different.  These are tokens. When I say the name of one of your pictures, cover it with a token. When I have said the name of all your pictures, you will get a prize.   For older children you could make it like a BINGO game.