A Construction Zone Birthday Party

My son is simply bonkers over diggers, dump trucks and concrete mixers. In fact, anything linked to construction excites him. Having a Father and Grandparents involved in construction may play a part. I have spent many hours sitting at building sites with my son, watching the “thrilling” happenings (insert rolling eyes emoji here) of a concrete pour.  With his love for construction, it was obvious that his 3rd birthday party would be construction themed. I had a lot of fun planning and putting his birthday party together. I had to remind myself, on a regular basis, that it was just a two-hour, 3rd birthday party. By the end, our construction zone was far more interesting than any real-life building site.  I am not so sure my son will agree with this, although he did think his party was pretty cool.  Just FYI, apparently, your party at 3 years old is a pretty big deal. An event not to be missed.  It was used as currency with everyone for weeks before the day!

“Mom, if you don’t buy me a chocolate, you can’t come to my digger party!”  my son shouting loudly in the grocery store.

“Without me, there is no digger party my boy!” I reply ever so sweetly between clenched teeth.

The big day

The weather on the day wasn’t great. With rain on and off,  I had to go to plan B. Plan B was to clean out our garage and move the party into there and set up food and drinks for the adults in my kitchen. I created sensory trays and a playdough table in the garage. The jungle gym and sandpit were set up for the times when it wasn’t raining.

Inside the entrance, there was a gift table. I put party bags on the table for guests for when they left. Their “wages” for a hard day working on the construction site.

I used

• chocolate gold coins (money for working),
• Kit Kat (Have a Break)
• a small construction toy.

Party Food Ideas

• Oreo biscuits were spare wheels,
• chocolate balls were stones and rocks
• fudge pieces were blocks,
• pretzel sticks were great drill bits
• grapes were wrecking balls.
• cone-shaped chips as warning cones,
• string-type sweets (candy) were cables
• a baker made some construction-shaped cookies for the table
• Big Dumper truck toys were used to tip popcorn into bowls

Here are some pictures from the party:

Bob Cat (skid steer) at the entrance to our building site.

To help control things, we made the upstairs part of our house a NO GO zone!

The giant excavator digging up stones and rocks as part of the food table decor.

Yellow, black and orange buckets were great for putting out the party food.  

The Digger Cake:  A very creative friend helped me by making the digger and little decor pieces for the cake out of fondant.  I baked a chocolate cake and my husband helped me decorate.  We used Oreo biscuits, chocolate balls and honeycomb chocolate bars to create the site where the digger was working.

One of the sensory trays that I had set up in the garage.  I used small stones and different diggers and dumper trucks.

I made some playdough mats for a playdough table. We used brown playdough and put out some building-type utensils and objects that could be used in their creations.  The playdough table proved to be a popular play station.

The party went really well.  Our game of “Pin the bucket on the excavator” was a bit chaotic in the garage, but fun!  The weather at the end of the party was so good, some of the children even ended up swimming.

Hopefully, I have inspired you to have some fun creating your child’s next birthday party theme.  The playdough mats are available for free in my TPT Store if you decide to have a construction-themed party or want to use them in your classroom.

Photo Credit:  B Gutzeit