While the recent new anime and cartoon series have invaded the children’s TV programs, shows like Sesame Street and Muppets are still core programmes children watch as they grow up. Indeed, it is rare that any child have not watched or heard of Sesame Street and/or Muppets before!

While that is so, there are few parties in Singapore that are puppet themed! Hence, if you want something novel and fun for your children’s birthday party, why not – A puppet themed party??

Decoration Ideas

Since this is going to be a puppet themed party, you can make use of any famous puppet cartoon or even shows that make use of puppets for decoration ideas! You can use famous ones such as: Sesame Street or Muppets. For example, you could go online to print pictures of famous puppet characters like Elmo and so on to stick on the wall. Using the freely available pictures from the internet, you could print banners and the likes easily. Of course, if you wish, you can allow your child to choose his/her favorite character as the theme – it is afterall his/her special day!

Balloons are a must for all parties, so for puppet themed parties, you could get Sesame Street helium aluminium balloons which are easily available at most party supply stores. You can look for balloon decorators who can make balloon characters that can stand at the door to welcome your guests. Of course, these balloon characters will be famous puppets from children shows!

If there is a table setting, you can make things more fun, by having simple sock puppets on each child’s cup. Simply invert each cup and pull a sock puppet over the cups. The puppet need not be very complicated. All you will need is a lot of socks (new socks are recommended – the parents may not be happy with the kids getting old sock puppets!!) and of course, some plastic eyes that can be bought at art stores. You can get bright and colourful socks from night market and simply stick on a pair of eyes for each one of the socks. This makes a good decoration at the table and the kids can bring the puppet home after the party too.

Door gift ideas

For door gifts, you could give each child that attends your party a puppet making kits. Kits like these for children are commercially available and are pretty

affordable and have all the items needed for making a nice hand puppet. Of course, puppets do not refer to just hand puppets! Besides being cute and lovable, finger puppets are affordable as door gifts too.

Alternatively, if the setting is not table setting (as described above) you could have the sock puppets as door gifts too! In fact, the sock puppets can double up as a candy sock! Stuff the songs with candies and the little party favours that you have prepared for the children and tie them up with pipe cleaners. Not only do they have a candy goody bag, they also have a sock puppet to play with!

Music Ideas

Since you’re having a party, music must be a given! For a puppet themed party, consider having Sesame Street songs for the background music instead of the traditional music. Of course, that can also be extended to the birthday song! Birthday song that is sang by the Muppets can be easily found, so you can use that for the party as well!

Entertainment

For entertainment, you could have a puppet making station. If you have given a puppet kit for the children as a door gift, encourage them to open their kit and have fun doing up their puppets. All you need is a table, some chairs, scissors, glue, wool (for puppet hair!), pipe cleaners, straws and anything that they wish for the puppet and your puppet station is all ready.

Of course, to make it more fun, announce a ‘puppet-making contest’ and the kids will be gearing to go to make the loveliest puppets! You can even have different categories for your puppet competition such as: ‘Cutest Puppet’, ‘Most Scary-Looking Puppet’ and so on and so forth!

You can also have some recordings of the famous puppet voices from the shows that the children are familiar with, for the children to have a ‘Guess Which Puppet” game. Alternatively, source for songs from various puppet shows and have the children guess which show the song comes from.

Of course, nothing beats live entertainment! So, for your puppet themed party, why not consider hiring a ventriloquist for entertainment? Instead of the traditional magic show, you could get a puppet ventriloquist for the party, or even better, hire an entertainer who can do a multi-variety show (ie. Magic and Puppets all in one show!). For example, you could hire an entertainer from a quality party entertainment company like Mighty Magic Factory, which offers a variety of shows that include magic, puppet and juggling – in this way; you can have the best of both worlds!