You make my heart pop! (Party)

I am so excited, we are going to start having parties every couple of months!  The reason?  To help bring families into our library.  To show them what all we offer and plant a love of reading in their hearts!  By drawing them in through this event, we can get them to visit us again and again!  This is our first year having a love themed party, and our attendance was 21 kids.  I was hoping for more, but honestly it was a really good turn out.  

I didn't want to advertise this as a "love" party, so my advertisement said "You make my heart pop!"  That way, it didn't scream Valentine's Day, and the popcorn on the sign that I made really caught the attention of everyone!  I stuck to that theme for my decorations too, which made this a lot of fun to plan.  Next year I'm thinking of possibly doing a construction theme?  Who knows, it's a year away!

Decorations:

For our setup, I had four round tables in the middle, so that people could sit and eat.  Around the sides, I had four long tables for crafts, one in the back with bingo, and one in the back for food also.

In the front of our auditorium was the putt-putt game and one other sensory game.

Food:

For food, we had popcorn, potato chips, gummy worms and cupcakes!  We did have a contest where the kids could guess how many gummy worms were in the jar, and the winner got to take home the jar.

Crafts:

Love Monster Torn Paper Craft

*The kids loved this!  What can I say, he's adorable!

Credit: Glued To My Crafts

You Stole a Pizza My Heart Craft

*This one was absolutely adorable!  I had crayons laid out, so that the kids could write the words on the plate themselves.  Hopefully they did, but I didn't get a chance to see.

Credit: Surviving a Teacher's Salary

Hedgehog Craft

*This was my favorite craft, and it seemed like the kids liked this one the most too!

Credit: Fireflies and Mudpies

Ninja Turtle Craft

*I wanted to have a craft that might appeal to boys, but we only had two boys show up!  Still, I love this ninja turtle.  I apologize, the link isn't working for me to give credit for this.

Games:

Love Monster Putt-Putt

*I had so much fun with this!  I ordered this putt-putt kit online, but wanted to do more with it than just setting it up.  I had this Valentine fabric, so I taped it down to the floor.  Then, I decided to mark the path with white hearts.  This was the favorite game for the kids!  They had so much fun with it!  

Valentine Bingo

*Anytime we play bingo, the kids adore it!  I usually have small prizes they can win, and I always have books.  This time I was pleasantly surprised, a number of the books were picked!  Yeah!

Feed the Frog Kisses Sensory Game

*I was so excited to use this game, but unfortunately it wasn't a popular game.  I think it was just a little to young for this crowd.  But that's okay, I will definitely be using it for my storytime kids at the end of this month!