Chicken Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Nathan!

Many weeks back I was sitting around the table during lunch with my kids and the topic of birthday parties came up.  Nathan's birthday was the next in line so the kids were asking him what kind of party he wanted.  Did he want a pirate party?  A train party? Muppets? Cars?  He listened quietly and then sat up and said "I know!  I know!  A chicken party!!"  Seriously, is it any wonder this child is my favorite? That is, of course, if parents had favorite children, which they don't, but he might be high on the list if there was such a list,  but of course I don't have a favorite.

For the next month Nathan told people that he was going to have a chicken party and he's been very excited about it.  I started looking around on the internet to get some ideas.

Turns out that not many people have chicken themed parties.  Weird.

Here are some of the things we came up with for our chicken baby's chicken party.

We started with a rousing game of "Duck, Duck, Chicken", but it was hard for the new 3 year old to remember to say "chicken" instead of "goose".

We followed that with a round of "Musical Nests".  Turns out this isn't a great game to play with a 3 year old.  He didn't see why he had to sit out and why someone else was sitting on his "nest", so we abandoned it and instead just danced the chicken dance.  The kids liked that a lot.

Next we did an "egg and spoon" race with some plastic eggs.  The kids got in 2 lines and we did it relay style.  Funnily, my 3 year old dropped the egg fewer times than my 9 year old.  He's got skills.

The last game we did was "hatch the egg".  I had put some little erasers inside some white balloons and the kids had to sit on them and pop the balloons to get them out.

We then had chicken cake and ice cream.

I had found a really cute chicken cake I tried to copy from here, and as you can see, I didn't make it nearly as cute.  It looked like she had used coconut to make her chicken look fluffy.  I do not like coconut, so I tried using grated white chocolate.  It's okay.  I also made a chocolate chicken cake, just because.

As our cousins left, Nathan passed out the chicken party bags.  The party bags had a cookie, some chicken feed (candy corn), some farm foam stickers, and an egg shaker which I had originally planned to have the kids shake to music during the party.

Some other chicken games we had thought of but didn't end up playing include:

hiding easter eggs and having kids find them and put them in the nest

doing scratch art

tossing (candy) corn into a chicken cutout mouth

playing "fox and chickens"

Chicken Books

Happy Chicken's Book Week 2012!

Wait.  I mean Happy Children's Book Week 2012.  Children. Chickens. I've heard it both ways.  

To celebrate I'm going to share with you some favorite books, starting with chicken books - and yes, we really have a chicken book collection.  Many years back, when trying to decide what the kids could give Jason for Christmas, I decided we should give daddy something that went along with a theme every year and that would make giving him gifts easier.  I thought it would be fun to give him a picture book he could read aloud to the kids, because we love reading books, and then I thought it should be a chicken book, since he thinks chickens are funny.  So, every Christmas and Father's Day the kids (and I) give him a chicken themed present.  Most of the gifts have been books, but we've done some other chicken things as well.

I think I've only bought one chicken book I didn't like and ended up giving away.  Here is a list of favorites:

Chickens to the Rescue
by John Himmelman
The kids love yelling out "Chickens to the rescue" each time the chickens save the day.

Rosie's Walk
by Pat Hutchins
This chicken manages to evade the fox without even realizing he's there.

Chicken Big
by Keith Graves
He's a very wise chicken.

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken
by Kate DiCamillo
Even chickens get tired of being cooped up and need some adventure, like on a pirate ship or in a circus.

Interrupting Chicken
by David Ezra Stein
Little chicken is not a very good listener.













Philadelphia Chickens
by Sandra Boynton
Mostly I got this for the CD of fantastic songs the kids love listening to, but they also like to hold the book while we are listening to read the words and sing along.


That is a good list of books.  They are all winners.

If you have favorite chicken books, let me know.  Father's Day is coming up soon.