Mad hatter party

Mad Hatter Tea Party
Variations: Madeline, American Girl, Magic Attic or other doll tea party.
Spring Bonnet Parade

Decorations:
Make from construction paper-hearts, spades and diamonds. Place these around the room and on the backs of chairs. Make large playing cards on poster board to set around the room. Toss hats everywhere. Fill them with flowers. Use dolls hats for holding nuts, cookies, etc.

For a spring theme, decorate with flowers, pussy willows, ribbons, bows, and paper streamers.

Cake:
Make a straw hat cake. Bake a cake in a round 11", 6 cup oven proof bowl. Invert the cake, frost and decorate with sugar flowers.

Madeline's Hat cake: Bake a round cake layer and one small soufflé or roundish oven proof dish dish cake. The little cake will sit on top of the large cake to form a hat. Ice in yellow. Broad strap licorice for the black bow and flowers and candles in the brim.

Pampered Chef makes a very easy recipe for a tea pot cake from a cake mix and their round bowl. Decorate it with red roses, cards, sugar bunnies (where are those Easter Peeps when you need them??!!?) and maybe a croquet/pink flamingo. It will sit next to the "Eat Me" tea cakes, right next to the small bottles of juice labeled "Drink Me"

Food:
Serve Ginger-ale in champagne glasses, or tea cups. Make small cookies, cakes that say eat me. Set out conversation hearts.

Decorate Hats:
Need: straw hats that will fit the children. If you prefer, make paper hats using firm paper plates and paper bowls. Cut out center of plate and tape and glue bowl to top. Let the children decorate them with "silk" flowers, tissue paper flowers, ribbon feathers, bows, string, streamers, etc. Use a glue gun with older kids or brads to attach.

Creative Hat Contest:
After they are done decorating. Hand out awards for their accomplishments. Make sure you have a ribbon or prize for everyone. Make up categories - most creative, most beautiful, silliest, etc.

Paint the Roses Red:
Need: butcher paper, one piece per team, with drawn roses with black marker. Red crayons or markers.
Divide kids into teams. On go the first person in line picks up a red marker/crayon and races to the rose sheet and fills in one rose. They then race back to the next in line.
First team to color all their roses red wins.

Teacup Relay:
Need-plastic teacups and saucer. Water.
Have teams ready, first must fill the cup with water and race to designated area and back again with out spilling.

Mad Spotter:
Need Colored stickers (different colors). Assign a point value to each color then stick these all over outside or in.
To Play: Give each player a card or paper and let them find as many spots as possible. Total the scores to see who wins.

Decorations: Child size tables, covered with lace table clothes. Good china (bread and butter plates). Tea cups and China tea pot.

Food: Serve hot chocolate, if preferred. Silver-plated tiered candy trays to serve pink and white animal cookies and chocolate mint cookies. Take various small vases and place a few flowers in each and place on the table or have one big centerpiece.

Other food ideas - scones, jam and mock Devonshire cream! Peanut butter and jelly finger sandwiches or cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Another easy, yummy thing to do is dip maraschino cherries or strawberries into chocolate, let dry on wax paper. (melt chocolate chips in a mug in microwave and stir-the kids like to do the dipping)

CAKE: Serve pastel pink frosted cupcakes with "pink and white snowballs" (a scoop of pink ice cream rolled in coconut and served in a cupcake liner-made beforehand for no scooping during the party!!!

Favors : Buy a child's china tea set and wrap one tea cup saucer and plate in tulle (nylon net) tie with a ribbon. You can fill the cup with jelly beans or ?

Play the above games, but the roses could be another color.

Hats:
Make sure you purchase smaller hats to fit the dolls. Let the girls decorate these also.

Sachets:
Need: Material or lace, potpourri, ribbon.
Let the girls make their own sachets to take home.

1. Pin the handle on the tea pot. You would have to make a poster board sized teapot and handles.

2. Hot Teapot. A version on hot Potato. Sew or use a real teapot and kids have to move it around.

3. Musical teapot. Make poster board sized teapots and place on ground. Kids walk to the music and step on the teapot instead of sitting in a chair.

3. Teabag Hunt. Hide teabags and let kids find them

4. Tea party Bingo. Make up cards with pictures of tea party items.....tea cups, teapots, silver sets, teabags, dolls. hats, gloves, feather boas, etc

5. Dress up Relay contest

6. Feather race - A team race. Need one feather per team and fans. The team must work together to keep their feather in the air without touching it and move it from the starting point to a basket.

Madeline Ideas:

Pin the Tail on Genevieve
Draw a picture of the Eiffel Tower on poster board, with Genevieve large in front. NO tail. Cover the picture with clear Contact paper so it's slick. Draw and cut out some tails and put tape on the ends to stick onto picture. Put numbers or children's' names on each tail so they know which tail is
theirs.

Drop Madeline into the River
Paint clothespins (not the spring kind) black on the very bottom (shoes), blue in the middle (coat), yellow on the top (hat), and a smiley face. These are Madeline's'. Do about 12 of them. Set two chairs, facing backward with a canister (like a large-mouthed pitcher) on the floor at the back side of chair. Each child kneels on the chair, facing the back of the chair and
drops Madeline's' into the pitcher (the river!).

Fish Madeline's Hat out of the River
Draw on yellow poster board, many yellow hats with black ribbons. Clip a metal paper clip on each hat. Cut thin wooden dowels to about 14" each in length. Tie 12" string at the end and tape to secure. Glue a strong magnet (from craft store) at the end
of each string. Toss the hats around on the floor and let the kids go fishing!

Another game with the hats:
Put a number on each of the above-mentioned hats. Put them in a
large circle on the floor. You'll need as many hats as you have guests. Write numbers on pieces of paper (same numbers as hats). Put numbers in a basket. Each guest stands on a hat (you can also cover the hats with clear Contact paper). Play music, the children march around on the hats while the music plays. When the music stops, each child stops on a hat. You pull a
number out of the basket. Whomever is on that number is out and gets to go to a box to pick a small treat. Start the game again, putting the number back into the basket in case someone is standing on that hat next time. This is a nice way to play where no one loses, they don't mind being "out" because
they get to pick a treat.

In Two Straight Lines
The guests line up in two straight lines and play Follow the Leader.