Mickey Mouse Birthday... Socially Distanced Style!
Who’s tired of staying away from everyone? Can I get a show of hands? Oh wait… Ya’ll aren’t here. (Ha. I’m so funny.)
Anyway I am solidly in that camp. And so is my now four-year-old. Can you believe my first post was about his first birthday? And now here we are three years later. Gah. Time is not my friend.
I was quite stressed about his birthday. Not that I needed to be. I’m sure he would have been fine with anything we did so long as we told him it was all for him. Kids are wonderfully resilient in some aspects. However he is an extremely social creature and not being able to see his friends at daycare or his cousins as much as he used to has been something close to torture. He’s been relentless in asking if he can play with ANYONE for the last…. Eon probably… So I was determined to find some way for him to see someone other than me. For his sanity and mine.
Thank goodness for digital meetings. Zoom, Google Hangouts, Meet, Duo, Skype, Facetime…. Miracles. Seriously. I planned an entire digital party and it took 30 minutes. The party not the planning.
First off my usual wrap up. I'm not going to sugar coat it and say having a party this way “couldn't be easier” or that it wasn't work. It was. Any time you try to plan something there is work involved. But with how happy it made him it was totally worth it.
SO.
Easy? Ish. Time-intensive? No worse than a regular birthday. Bonus points for not having to feed anyone worry about serving a bunch of toddlers. Coordinating everyone on one call was tricky but our family was awesome and played right along. Definitely worth a go if you have friends/family long who are a ways away and you want to include them or if you need to be careful with having people over for a while longer.
First off he got to choose the theme. He has since he was two. This kid knows his own mind and I try not to get in the way of that too much. He chose Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and I took it from there.
Next I just texted the people we invited to see if they were available for a video call. They were all great and we set up a time for a party. After that I just had to figure out what to do. I wanted the kids to have a reason for being there. A four year old is going to get bored in about two second of staring at someone on a screen but if they had a reason to stay involved I thought I could maybe eek 10-15 minutes out of them.
This is where the theme lent itself perfectly. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is all about solving puzzles and putting things together so that’s what we did. I came up with a “treasure hunt” style puzzler that they could mostly do in one room while sitting in one place. I had “Toodles” to give them clues and then the day before the party we drove to their houses and dropped of a “party kit” so to speak. I had to ask the parents for help here in hiding the treasure but apart from that everything was in their kit. I would give them clues and then they had to solve them together over the call. Then at the end I had someone read off a little poem that told them where to look for the treasure in the house. All of the kids took off and with some help found their treasure chests. I thought it would end there but they all brought it back and had fun opening the boxes and showing off the toys and playing with their party favors. What I thought would only take about ten minutes went for a full 40 and they were all just giggling and having a great time. My boy got done with it and didn’t mind at all that no one came to our house. He just kept playing with his own treasure and talking about the hunt and wondering how space pirate Pete hid the treasure in our house.
It was totally a life saver for this kid. He has been so socially starved and cut off with all this craziness that I wish we would have done more things like this sooner. If you’d like to use my “script” I’ve included a rough of it below. The party supplies I got from Amazon. (I know. I’m lazy. I’ve gotten great ones from Zurcher’s as well though.)
We loved this party. What do you think?
Assembling the Kits
For the kits I made sure to have everything put together ahead of time and then dropped them off the night before so that there was no assembly necessary on their part. I could have mailed them too and if they had lived any further away I would have. They were small enough that I could have included everything in a flat rate shipping box and sent them out the week before. If you need to do this route, you just need to plan a little further out so that they get the kit in plenty of time before the party.
The “treasure” was all put into a box that I got from Amazon. This is the box I used. And the party pack that I used is here. You can put anything in though. I just got something that my kid would like and then tried to give every box a little something fun. The clues then went into the gift bag around the box.
I taped the bag shut and wrote on it to not open until the birthday. For good measure I put some tissue paper on top so that any curious eyes couldn’t see anything even if they peeked.
After I delivered the bags I texted the parents and asked them to hide the treasure box somewhere in their kitchen the morning of the party. It was as simple as that. Once the call started the kids got the gift bags and I read them the clues and we went from there.
Party Script
Here is the script I came up with for anyone interested. Feel free to use the same one or come up with your own. It was super fun and took about 20 minutes to get through all the clues and find the treasure. Enjoy!
Get everyone on the call and tell them that child is having a birthday and there is a birthday treasure.
“There’s a problem though. Space Pirate Pete has hidden the treasure and I need you guys to find it. Are you up for it?”
- Answers yes
“Awesome! I have someone here who can help. Does anyone know who this is?”
Show them the picture of Toodles. You can also sing the song from the song when Mickey gets the Mouseketools and there is also the rhyme they say each time they ask Toodles to come help. It all depends on how much you can get them to participate/how into it you are. We also had mouse ears that each kid earned for figuring our a clue. The goal was to get them all with the ears on by the end. It started out well but they were so excited to put them on that we just made it into part of the party. I got them on Etsy here.
“Here is your first clue”.
Number one is the picture of the puzzle pieces. “Anyone know what these are?”
Wait until they say puzzle pieces. “Yes! A puzzle! Does anyone have a puzzle in their bag?”
They all do. “Maybe putting it together will give you another clue!”
Then let the kids put them together. Once they are all done point out the next clue.
“What does clue number two look like?” It was a bunch of random words and question marks. I was waiting for them to say words or questions or something.
“Hmmm. Did anyone see the back of their puzzle?” They all had. “Maybe you need to unscramble the words to figure out the next clue.”
The words on each of their puzzles was a little different but they all basically said ask Grandma for the final clue. They were all cousins so they knew who that would be. If you’re doing friends you can pick a parent or you could even do it yourself and read off the final clue. Once they figure it out point to the final spot on Toodles.
“Grandma must be our mystery mousketool!” Let’s see what she has for us.”
At this point she read out a clue I had sent to her ahead of time. It read,
Find your treasure near the pots and pans,
Then do the Hot Dog Dance with all your fans!
Then we just followed them all around their kitchens until they found the boxes of treasure. They kind of did a silly dance but mostly just pulled out the toys and played with them.
