Wizard of Oz party.

Today I took the children to their friends' Wizard of Oz party. We had to rustle up costumes at fairly short notice. Witches outfits were already available in our dressing up box but Henry wanted to go as the cowardly lion. So his Nana very kindly burned the midnight oil last night to make him this wonderful costume from a brown hooded top.

The ears have cardboard in to make them stand up,

and the fur came from a wig she had!

At the party, the props came from a drama set for a Wizard of Oz theatre production, donated by a friend.

There were a few 'Dorothy' outfits. They were ready made ones. I think Rosie's (in picture) was bought on Ebay. One boy came dressed in a brilliant tin-man costume, though it didn't take him long to pull it to pieces - what a shame. And there were a good mix of good witches, bad witches, munchkins, scarecrows and lions. I didn't find any flying monkey outfits but I found a bat costume in Mothercare which was only £3.99 for my little baby boo!

When I got there, I was asked to help think up some games for the guests to play. We came up with a kind of musical statues game except when the music stopped, the children had to pose as a sleeping lion, a rusted up tin man or a scarecrow. My daughter, Honor, was a bit shy to start with as she did not know many of the children there. So we divided the kids into 4 teams to do an 'Oz has got talent' activity. The groups had to work together to perform a short scene and song for the rest of us to watch. This was a great ice-breaker. The little shows were very good and by the time they had finished, the kids knew each other better. After the food, I had to come up with another game. As my kids love it when I hide snakes in the garden for them to find (this activity originated on St Patrick's Day) I got the birthday girl to collect up as many toy dogs as she could find in the house. She had a lot of them! Then while the guests waited in the living room, I hid the dogs around the garden. The children then played 'hunt the Toto'!!! They seemed to really enjoy that one and wanted to play it several times.