Ideas for throwing the perfect Teddy Bears Picnic
Is there anything more fun for little ones than a Teddy Bears Picnic?
It’s a great way to get your kids outdoors – they love having their own Teddy Bears’ Picnic! And it doesn’t need to be fancy. You’re done with some simple, fun food, toys and games, stuffed animals and a picnic blanket!
It’s a fun and healthy way to spend quality family time together, and it also makes a great summer playdate or inexpensive birthday party idea! And if the weather turns foul, you can move it indoors easily.
Here are my tips on how to have the BEST Teddy Bears Picnic!
Send out a Teddy Bears Picnic Invitation!
If it’s for a party or a bigger event, you can get creative and make an invite, but it’s quick and easy to do it through a simple text or WhatsApp to your favourite group of mum friends!
It could also be a great way to get to know people better from your child’s class or after-school club – don’t be shy and make the first move and ask! Most people will be delighted to have been included.
If you’re feeling extra adventurous, you could arrange a big whole-class picnic at your local park to celebrate the end of term.
Ask the parents to let their children bring their favourite teddies to the party – of course; it doesn’t need to be a teddy; any stuffed toy is fine!
Make up some simple picnic party food
If your children are anything like my daughter was, getting them to eat healthily can sometimes be tricky!
You might also have any dietary requirements or allergies from some of the other guests to consider.
Most supermarkets have a great range of ‘free-from’ foods and alternatives, and you hardly know the difference between many of these. One of our closest friends is vegan, and I always find a suitable substitute when her family visit.
If you’re organising a big event, you’ll find that people will generally be happy to offer to contribute some food – my advice is to accept with thanks!
You can’t go wrong with fruit, chips’n’dips, and good old jam sandwiches!
Break out your biggest picnic blanket!
We love this jumbo-sized ASAB picnic blanket which we got from Amazon – at 3 metres by 2.2 metres in dimension, you can certainly fit a lot on it; it also folds up nicely and wipes easily, and has a lovely, bright traditional tartan pattern.
Of course, you could ask other parents to bring their picnic blankets and join/overlap them to make one extra-large sitting area.
Games and Activities for a Teddy Bears Picnic – Make a Timetable
You don’t want to be too inflexible because, for one thing, you’re dealing with children here, and for another, you don’t want all the fresh food you and other parents have prepared spoiling by lying out for too long. But a rough (and adaptable)timetable for your Teddy Bear Picnic games and activities could go something like this:
- Get all the Teddy Bears together and set them up in a circle. Maybe the children could introduce their favourite toy.
- Then it’s time to kick off the fun by singing and dancing to the famous teddy bear picnic song ‘if you go down to the woods today’. And, of course, you can also find some other teddy bears picnic rhymes to sing.
- Have some simple games planned – depending on the age of the children, maybe Tag, Hide and Seek or ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’ could be good options!
- Enjoy your picnic food!
- Burn off some of the energy by having some dancing – why not check out YouTube for some great traditional children’s songs and dances? You might recognise some old favourites from when you were that age!
- Quieten down with a story (with an appropriate Teddy Bear theme, of course!), or if you have an indoor Teddy Bears Picnic, pop on a movie.
Use your imagination and have fun!
