Just like you, I try to lower the environmental impact of my family, including our celebrations. I’ve been so excited about all of the reusable birthday party supplies in the Green Celebrations department of bynature.ca that I spent a whole month writing about it. March (and a bit of April) has been a month of birthdays.

Birthday Party Themes

The first step in planning a birthday party is the theme. It is the structure that we use to hold it all together. My advice through every age is to work with your child’s specific interests and build on those to make a fun party for all.

For 1-year olds – 1st Birthday Themes for Babies

For 2- to 4-year olds – Toddler Birthday Party Ideas

For 4- to 8-year olds – Birthday Party Themes for the Imaginative Young Child

For 8- to 12-year olds – Older Children Provide Their Own Birthday Party Ideas

For teens – Birthday Party Workshops for Teens

Very Cool Products from bynature.ca

We have a lot of great party supplies and birthday decorations at bynature.ca. I highlighted a few and told a bit of the history beyond the traditions. I thought I would cover a lot more about birthday traditions, but it turns out that many of those party traditions we have all participated in since we were children ourselves aren’t quite as interesting as I had hoped. Believe me, you should be relieved that I didn’t end up writing about birthday candles.

Waldorf Birthday Rings

Party Hats

Stories of Real Birthday Parties

Nature Mom and I have both made our own efforts to lower our party impact. Our success has generally come in raising our children with expectations about celebration more than about stuff. We make their days special with what we do not in what everyone gets (then quickly throws away).

Our Eco Birthday Party by Nature Mom

My Daughter’s Eco Super Hero Birthday Party

Eco Birthday Baby Steps

Don’t worry about creating the perfect party. Take the steps you are ready to take, and catch another step for the next party. Taking Eco Baby Steps isn’t about perfection. It’s about the constant process of raising your own and your family’s awareness of how you live.

My Rules of the Eco-friendly Loot Bag

8 Fun and Free Places to Hold a Birthday Party

Allergy-free Birthday Cakes

Creative Family Birthday Celebrations

See original posts for image credits.

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By the time your child is a teenager, the cute themes are over. (So, take advantage and enjoy it while they are little!) If you have used your own child’s interests to give shape to parties every year, that will make it even easier to do the same for teens.

According to my teenage daughter, birthday party themes should not come from outside—that is, YOU as the parent—but from the birthday child. You could start with a structure in mind, though, and ask your child how to fill in the details.

For a birthday party that engages teens, start with your child’s passion.

What do you love doing so much that you want to share with your friends?

Most children have spent time developing a skill in sports, in the arts, or in some other area of interest. Rather than just sharing that interest, how about helping a few of your child’s friends gain some skill.

For a teenager’s birthday party, hold a workshop, an intense day or half day when your child can share what they love to do with the people they most like to spend time with. Invite an expert to teach a class for the kids. This does add a big expense to the party budget, but you don’t need a lot of decorations or a gift bag for teens if the experience itself is the gift.

Teen Birthday Workshop Ideas

Keeping in mind that only your child knows the best theme for a birthday party workshop, these are a few of the ideas my children and I have come up with.

Dance Workshop
My daughter is an aerial dancer. She climbs silks and spins on the trapeze. She has taken several friends to classes with her, and she has made friends with other young dancers, but she wants more of her friends to have the experience of flying through the air on silk. One of the ideas she is considering for her upcoming birthday is an aerial dance workshop taught by once of her teachers, a professional who has danced with Cirque du Soleil and other circuses.

Martial Arts Workshop
My son is a kung fu junior instructor. Like my daughter, he has occasionally encouraged friends to join him for a class or an event, but he would like to share with them what has kept him coming back year after year. One of his kung fu teachers is also a pro skateboarder who has infected my son and many others with parkour, or freerunning. I think my son wants all of his friends to learn how to jump over huge obstacles so they can spend their days running and jumping.

Music Workshop
My nephew has been in bands since he was 10 years old. He went through School of Rock and many garage bands as well as a local program that teaches teens technical support skills beyond the microphone. One of our neighbors has a small recording studio in his basement. These two ideas come together in my mind as a day for friends to learn some music and recording basics and create a song of their own. It may not be a masterpiece (or maybe it will be), but isn’t a recording of oneself better than any goodie bag?

Cooking Workshop
Like it or not, your children will have to learn to feed themselves soon. They will go with the cheapest, easiest choices unless they have clear reasons to give serious thought to food. My niece is now in culinary school. She has been the designated cook among her friends since she was a young teen. I put this together with the idea of teen cooking demonstrations that Jamie Oliver gave during his television program Food Revolution. How about a child who loves to cook teaching her friends about low-impact, healthy food choices.

Start a brainstorm with your teen about what he or she loves and wants to share. Ask who you know that could help and what resources you can find in your town. Ask your child to take the lead in deciding how best to celebrate his or her birthday.

Happy Family Holiday

In my family, all birthdays are family holidays. We give our focus to the birthday person and do our best to make dreams come true for a day. As parents, our role changes as our children grow older and take on more responsibility. Like most aspects of attachment parenting, our job is to be the support and guidance when they need it—and to step back to admire their independence when they don’t. A birthday party for a child or any age should follow their lead.

More birthday party ideas

• First birthday party themes for babies
• Toddler birthday party ideas
• Young children love imaginative themes
• Older children provide their own birthday party ideas

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On my daughter’s 11th birthday, she and her friends celebrated girl eco-super heroes. My daughter had a Gaia Girls themed birthday party.

Gaia Girls is a girls adventure series in which four girls are each approached by Gaia, the living organism of the earth in the form of an otter, to help her. Each of the girls has power over one of the elements: air, fire, water, or earth. Gaia, as an otter, asks each girl to help her by using the elemental power she has.

In the first book, Enter the Earth, Elizabeth uses the power of Earth to fight CAFOs (confined or concentrated animal feeding operations) that threaten her town in upstate New York. In the second book, Way of Water, Miho uses the power of Air to fight the Japanese dolphin hunt. The rest of the books are not yet published. The third book, Air Apparent, uses the power of air; the fourth book uses the power of fire; and the last three books see the four girls come together to use the powers of all four elements.

How the Party Developed

My daughter was young when the first book was published, but we read it several times. When she heard that author Lee Welles was going to speak at a green festival we were attending, she sat for hours hugging her book, waiting in the children’s area, before it was announced that Ms. Welles had not been able to make it. My daughter was so disappointed.

Half a year or so later, I happened to be in a booth next to Lee Welles at another green festival. I bought her new book, had her sign it to my daughter, and told her about my daughter so patiently waiting to meet her. She was so moved by the story, that she asked how she could make it up to her. Since we were next to one another for most of a weekend, we kept talking and together we hatched a scheme to have her call my daughter on her birthday to talk about Gaia Girls.

How We Created the Gaia Girls Party

My daughter invited five girlfriends to her party. Each invitation was tucked into a copy of Gaia Girls: Enter the Earth (book one). Most of the girls read the book before the party.

We decorated with colorful fabric scraps tied to our trees. My husband is the family creator of treasure hunts. Since all of the girls were strong readers, he made the clues fairly difficult riddles, leading the girls around our neighborhood, which is surrounded by open space and a lot of trees. The final clue led to a group of otters swimming up a blue playsilk river—a large otter hand puppet as mother with enough baby otter finger puppets for each guest.

The cake was a simple round cake decorated with the Gaia Girls logo. Each girl also decorated a donut as we talked about the elements in the logo.

As the highlight of the party, the girls talked on the phone with Lee Welles, asking her questions about Gaia Girls and about writing.

My daughter and her guests knew that they were going to be talking to the author, but they didn’t know that she had sent my daughter a gift: a chapter from the as-yet unpublished Air Apparent, her next book. Keeping in mind that these were 11-year old girls, there was a lot of happy screaming.

The Logistics

All we bought for the party were books, puppets, donuts, and food to make lunch. I made and decorated the cake, and we used my fabric scraps as colorful decorations outside. We created and printed invitations and treasure hunt clues. We used the left-over colored cake frosting to decorate donuts. The party was simple and focused, but the girls had a lot of time to just run around our house to talk and play. It was a good balance of structured and open time.

It probably isn’t practical to plan a party around an author’s call unless you happen into a lucky situation like I did. This is a great age to plan a party around a favorite book, though. My son is a reader of the Percy Jackson series, and he attended a party around that theme. Any favorite book might suggest a birthday party theme.

Gaia Girls

The seven-book series is still two books long because author Lee Welles is busy being the Deputy Mayor of Corning, New York, at the moment. My daughter feels attached to the element of fire, so she is anxiously awaiting the publication of book three so she can then anxiously await the publication of book four about fire.

That my daughter was able to share an earth-friendly theme with her friends—they talked about what it means to raise animals in CAFOs—led to further conversations about how each of them could take steps to green their lives. It’s a simple step, but it’s a step. Every step is good.

The Gaia Girls blog is updated frequently and is still a good place for any older child to begin to make connections between the beauty of the earth around them and the need to act to protect the natural world.

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As children get older, between 9 and 12 years old, I have found they want birthday parties about their interests, whether those interests are friends or activities. You may not need to think through a focused birthday party theme or a predictable structure like you did when your children were younger.

“Every year, you want a themed party less and less. It’s less important to you. I just want to spend time with my friends and family. I don’t need a huge party to be happy with my birthday. There used to be a lot more party guests, but now I only want to invite the people who are my best friends and my family.” My 13-year old daughter

This is also the age when my children started asking for parties with just girls or boys. Segregated parties. I didn’t think it would happen, but this is the calm before the storm when teen parties most definitely have boys and girls.

Each phase in childhood, each age range, requires a different approach. Each child may require a different approach as well. Last year, all my son wanted for his birthday was to play mini golf with my husband and a couple of friends. It was a boys afternoon out, and they had a great time. The family always has a separate meal and party from the friend party, so my daughter and I didn’t mind at all.

“I like having a big cake. Mama makes great cakes. Even if the birthday party isn’t themed, you can have the cake themed.” My 10-year old son

“I used to think that every birthday party needed a cake, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a cake. For the past few birthdays I’ve had key lime pie, and I’m really happy with it.” My 13-year old daughter

Don’t worry too much as the parent that you have to come up with ideas for your child’s party. Gradually encourage your child to step up into more responsibility for the ideas, the planning, and the party itself. Brainstorm with your child what their ideal day would be. See how you can plan a party to help them make their birthday wish come true.

“Oh, it’s so cold. Why is my birthday always so cold? I want to be outside with my friends.”

How about a beach party for a winter birthday. Invite guests to dress for summer under their winter coats and play what beach games you can indoors. Wear sunglasses. Serve picnic foods. Play summer songs. Create a whole atmosphere of summer fun to take them out of the cold winter temporarily.

“I want to climb a mountain!”

If you have a mountain to climb, go on a birthday hike. If you don’t have a nearby mountain, go rock climbing indoors. My local recreation center has a rock climbing wall. I reserved it for an hour and sent a dozen kids scaling up and down the wall. When they were tired and hungry, I fed them lunch and birthday cake shaped like a climbing wall with multi-colored hand holds. It was a simple, active party.

“I want to spend all day with my friends.”

A sleepover can be one long birthday party. This is the age when my children were first willing to sleep over at friends’ houses. A sleepover birthday party could turn into backyard camping with a campfire dinner, a dance party, and scary stories with flashlights. They may not need much structure, but it helps to have a few planned activities spaced out through the evening. In the morning, have everyone join in to cook their own breakfast before going home. They end up spending a good chunk of a day together.

Tips from My Children

• The birthday cake doesn’t have to be a cake.
• A birthday party doesn’t have to have a theme.
• Party favors can be one big thing instead of many little things.
• Parents should come to the party.
• Ask your children what they want rather than suggesting a theme.
• Make sure that they really want the flavor of cake before you make it.
• Encourage them not to just settle for whatever you want.

On Friday, I look forward to telling you all about my daughter’s favorite birthday party ever for her 11th birthday. I will tell you that she wanted to be an eco-super hero, but you’ll have to come back to read the rest.

Image © Michalakis Ppalis | Dreamstime.com

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Holidays and birthdays are opportunities to celebrate the familiar—the family-ar, as in, those ideas and those people who are so close to us that they are part of our intimate circle. For a lot of us who are focused on attachment parenting, those intimate family relationships are the core of our motivation for all of these choices. We are creating our children’s reality. We are setting a pattern for what our children will celebrate as familiar.

One of the reasons I keep coming back to The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections is the coherence of the philosophy of keeping family close while encouraging a child’s freedom of creativity and action. Whether we call this attachment parenting or we just practice it in various forms of “don’t offer, don’t refuse,” balancing our support for each individual child’s need for connection and for independence is the challenge of parenting.

Spiraling around year after year to familiar celebrations is one of the ways we build that nurturing foundation for our children, the foundation that gives them grounding over time.

Making yourself conscious of your traditions as you build them with your young family, according to The Creative Family author Amanda Blake Soule, “can help voice or reaffirm what your family traditions are for yourself and your children, as well as help you reevaluate what you want for elements in your celebrations” (162).

I’ve been so focused on birthdays through this month (and it will continue for another week or so) that I wanted to share with you the Creative Family ideas for birthdays.

We’re all used to the ideas of a big party, presents, balloons, and cake, but here are a few ideas for some creative new ways to celebrate birthdays in your home. These ideas are centered on celebrating the child and who they are, with a little bit less focus on what they want and/or have.

She suggests:

• a birthday garden, whether a plot or a pot;
• love letters from parents to child, a beautiful collection over time; and
• birthday blessings as everyone shares what they love about the birthday child, what they remember of the past year, or what they wish for the coming year

The nudge, push, and shove to celebrate in a particular way is strong, but you as a parent have all of the power to create a tradition of familiar celebrations that fit who you are and who you want to be.

Image © Wavebreakmedia Ltd | Dreamstime.com

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Between the ages of 5 and 8 years old, children are immersed in imaginative play. They love dress up, and they don’t look for direction from adults in creating their characters. A birthday party for young children should take full advantage of this phase. Give the children plenty of chance to be the characters, to tell the story, and to make up the party as they go.

Kids Birthday Party Theme Ideas

For an imaginative play birthday party, set the scene and provide enough structure that the party still feels like a party. Once you show the children the direction for a game or activity, though, give them plenty of space to add their own creativity, noise, and enthusiasm.

Pirate Birthday Party

Decorations. Bynature.ca carries the perfect pirate party decorations: a reusable party banner of pirate flags and reusable pirate hats. The rest of the party could include the brightest red or plainest white play silks as flags. If you have any parrot stuffed animals, they need to either go on someone’s shoulder or perch around the room. Transform the food table into a ship. Put snacks in a treasure chest, easily made from a box if you don’t have a chest handy. Use all of the blue play silks, blankets, and sheets to create a watery scene.

Games & Activities. Every band of small pirates needs to go on a treasure hunt. When we had a pirate birthday party, we had both readers and non-readers, so we created both written and visual clues for the hunt. We made the hunt itself cooperative, so that all of the pirates had to reach the end together, and all of the gifts and favors were waiting at the end of the hunt. For other activities, you could have each guest take turns talking like a pirate and have everyone else try to translate what they say into English.

Food. My son had a brief obsession with pirate-themed food after we checked out The Pirate Cook Book from the library. I had to track down this out-of-print book and buy it. Jiggling juice bar icebergs, fish-shaped sandwiches, and twice-baked potato pirate boats came in handy at a couple of parties. The cake itself could be a treasure map, a ship, or chest of loot.

Favors. Our pirates took home their loot in cloth bandanas, but we also carry reusable pirate party gift bags. Appropriate loot for these bags would be gold (small cookies), jewelry (homemade), and snacks. I’m not sure Caribbean pirates looked for snacks, but I am sure your young pirates will like snacks.

Dragon Themed Birthday Party

Decorations. How to decorate depends on the kind of dragons your child is interested in. Right now, my daughter is very interested in Chinese dragons. When she was small, she was more interested in the average cave-dwelling, treasure guarding dragon. Keep the party theme to one type of dragon, and create the party space as an appropriate lair. Some dragon parties might have the children fight the dragon, but I think the children will want to BE the dragon—a whole weyr (herd) of dragons.

If your child is turning 8 years old, this is a perfect time to have a dragon party. We carry a dragon number 8 for your Waldorf birthday ring.

Games & Activities. I like having one of the party activities be creating one’s own party favor. For a dragon party, a dragon puppet makes a great craft and favor. Children this age can sew, but a party is not the time for a closely supervised activity. Give each child a sock or another basic hand puppet shape. Provide pre-cut dragon scales, eyes, teeth, and other decorations along with glue. Give them general instructions, but they will have a good idea how to proceed. After they let their puppets dry as they eat or play, they can come back to the dragon puppets and all join together acting out a dragon drama. Another quick game could be Pin (or maybe Stick) the Scales on the Dragon.

Food. A dragon cake is great fun to decorate. I baked multiple round cakes and pieced them together to make a big, snaking dragon. I mounted the mouth on a large spatula to hold it open. I used gummy candy to decorate: gummy teeth for the mouth, Swedish fish for the scales, red licorice fire coming out of the mouth, and big gummy eyes staring out at all of the children. Even short of the 4-foot long monster I created, a dragon cake can be made at any scale. Even cupcakes can be made into dragon faces.

Favors. As with pirates, those who party with dragons often end up with gold, jewels, and similar loot. Maybe guests would like to take home a dragon soft toy or mask to continue the dress up and play. At my daughter’s dragon birthday party, guests had to work for their loot. We created a dragon out of a box about 4′ high and 2′ on each side. The teeth were made from egg cartons mounted on giant BBQ tongs. Children had to reach inside the dragon’s mouth to look for treasure. Sometimes they got little nips (though my husband was a very gentle dragon), but they all came away with gifts. The guests were 6 to 8 years old, and they screamed in delight at every bite.

Image © Showface | Dreamstime.com

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I adore Waldorf birthday rings. They create a beautiful family ritual that spirals back around each year as you focus on your birthday child.

We have an older birthday ring in my house. After seeing all of the new birthday ring accessories at bynature.ca, I’m wondering if I can get away with connecting a couple of rings (well, several) to make a new decoration for my next birthday.

How Does a Birthday Ring Work?

The base of a birthday ring is a simple circle of wood with 12 (or 16) holes.

For your baby’s 1st birthday, put a candle in one hole and with numbers or figures in the other holes. Each year, add another candle. You can continue to use the figures you started out with, or you can add a new figure each year to represent your child’s growth or current interests.

Some families use the rings for other holidays or as a centerpiece for special dinners as well. Build up a collection of figures over time for a meaningful family traditional you can all share.

To Start a Birthday Ring Family Tradition

Start with at least three pieces: the ring (the base), one candle holder, one candle, and a figure representing your child. You don’t need 11 figures to start, though you may not be able to resist 11 gorgeous figures. You may want to buy a set of birthday numbers or start with a character number. We also have basic ring decorations, character figures, animal figures, and garden figures.

All of the pieces of the Waldorf birthday ring are part of our Green Celebrations collection. See them all on our Facebook page.

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For both of my children, their first birthday cakes were their first solid foods. That means all at once they covered their faces with milk, eggs, wheat, and other potential food allergens. A lot of us take the chance that our baby won’t have a reaction or sensitivity to birthday cake even if we are careful introducing new foods slowly otherwise.

If you are introducing your baby to new foods at a birthday party, at least simplify the birthday cake recipe to reduce the number of potential food allergens.

Wheat-free Cakes. If you aren’t attached specifically to the idea of having a cake, frosted rice krispie treats have that cake feel without wheat. An ice cream or frozen yoghurt cake could also be a wheat-free treat if you aren’t also avoiding dairy.

Egg-free Cakes. If you are avoiding eggs, avoid egg substitutes unless they are egg-free. Check the label. You may need to look online for vegan cooking ingredients. If you are lucky enough to have a local vegan bakery, even better. Save yourself the time and support a local business.

Dairy-free Cakes. Some cake mixes are dairy free. If you have a favorite homemade recipe, a simple substitution of soy milk may be enough. Wacky cake is a common and much loved dairy-free and egg-free cake that uses vegetable oil for moisture and binding.

Cake Flavors

For babies who have been eating solids foods, they may already know carrots, zucchini, applesauce, and bananas. All of these make great additions to cakes. The cake will just push familiar flavors a little. Since a lot of the sweetness in these cakes comes from the fruit or vegetable, you won’t need to add so much sugar.

You may also want to avoid chocolate, peanuts, and tree nuts. Until you have introduced these foods and know that you child has no problems with them, you can easily flavor your cakes without them.

Frosting

If you are avoiding buttercream frosting, there are several ways you can create that frosting feel without adding a slab of butter and powdered sugar to your cake.

Cream cheese frosting is sweetened with powdered sugar and made loose enough to spread with milk. If you want to avoid adding sugar, try mixing yoghurt and cream cheese until it is a texture you like. You could also use whipped cream, but don’t put it on the cake too long before you serve since it can lose its firmness and soak into the cake.

Or, avoid frosting altogether. A light sprinkling of powdered sugar or fresh-cut strawberries dress up a cake.

Check with the Guests

Your child isn’t the only person you should look out for when you are making a birthday cake. Either make a note on your invitation to let you know about any food allergies or just call the guests. Sometimes it is easier to speak up about food sensitivities when it feels like a casual question. When I receive a dinner invitation, I dread the conversation when I say, “I can’t have dairy or this or that.” I often wonder if my saying that will be followed up with, “Oh, don’t bother coming, then.”

Make it easy for your guests to speak up.

Are you ready to make your cake? Do you know what you plan to avoid in a recipe? The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network has a free allergy-free recipe database with cake after beautiful cake that you can use to introduce your baby to the joy of birthday cake.

Resources

• Food allergy basics
• Wheat-free tips
• Dairy-free tips
• Egg-free tips

Image © Pfong001 | Dreamstime.com

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Cut down on children’s birthday party expenses by finding a place to hold that party that doesn’t charge an entrance or event fee. New places may suggest fun themes and activities beyond the usual party games. Even if you do the usual games and cake, going to a new and exciting place can be an adventure that makes the party memorable.

1. Fire station

I arranged a party with a local fire company. The kids all got Jr Firefighter hats and safety lessons, though I’m sure all they really remember is crawling around the fire truck. The drawback is: if there is a fire, the party is over.

2. Local history visitors’ center

Depending on your local history, a birthday part at a local history site could include hearing from volunteers, seeing demonstrations, drawing maps, treasure hunts, or re-enactments.

3. Farmer’s market

If your farmer’s market has picnic tables and your party is small, you can join in the fun. Send the kids on a treasure hunt to find honey or fruit. If the market isn’t too busy, ask a farmer to talk to the children about what they do on their farm.

4. Farm

If you are considering talking to a farmer, how about going all of the way to the farm. Children are curious where their food comes from and they like meeting animals. They may not even realize it’s an educational trip.

5. You-pick farm

If your child has a mid- to late-summer birthday, you can look into pick-your-own farms. Raspberries are ripe around my daughter’s birthday, so we spent her first several years with friends having a picnic at a raspberry patch.

6. Park or playground

Though you could always go to a local park, it mixes things up to go to a park or playground that you don’t usually go to. The year we went to a park with a rock climbing wall, the climbing wall-shaped cake was the hit of the party.

7. Day camping

Take the kids for an outdoor adventure at a nearby campground or state park. Melissa celebrated at the lake and gave all of the kids a pail and a shovel. Be sure you have enough adults present to keep track of wanderers.

8. Your own backyard

You can’t get any cheaper than your own backyard. Your birthday party venue doesn’t have to be new to be exciting. Dress up your backyard. Draping play cloths across wash lines can create a whole new landscape to explore.

Image © Karin Hildebrand Lau | Dreamstime.com

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