Squishmallow Party

Pop culture parties are almost always a hit at my libraries and this Squishmallow Party was no different. I hosted four parties in March. Total attendance was 151 and of that 92 were children. 

The party started with a Show and Tell Your Squish session. Two of the parties had a large number of children (31 and 37) so I had to pivot a bit. Building on the storytime song "If You're Wearing Red Today," I had a look at the Squishmallows and then had the kids stand up and do some actions based on their Squishmallows. For example, if your Squishmallow is a cat, stand up and toss your Squish in the air. I shared a bit from the book Squishmallows: The Official Collectors Guide. For smaller numbers of children, I had a Squish Toss game planned. Three turns to get your squish into 3 buckets. (Note: these will need some weight added to them if you don't want to be constantly resetting the game)

We then moved onto the craft segment of the party. I considered several options, but knew I needed to keep the craft time at about 15 minutes. The other options I considered were design your own Squishmallow (drawing and coloring) or paint a Squishmallow. I stumbled upon some Make-a-Face Sticker Books from Dollar Tree that reminded me of Squishmallows. These were created by The Clever Factory and I used the Animals and Funny Foods. I ran low at some point and supplemented with Beary Fun and Caticorns. Each sticker book had 6 pages. (Note: I'm saving the leftover stickers for another project...maybe design a creature with my teens.) This was a super simple craft. I provided copy paper and each kid got to pick 1 sticker page to make.

After crafting, there was a photo op in the room. I used cute wrapping paper for the backdrop and banners I got on Teachers Pay Teachers from Hot Mess Homeschool Mama. 

Once every one was done crafting and taking pictures, we went on a Squishmallow Bigfoot hunt in the children's section of the library. I used table numbers from Alt-3 Academics on Teachers Pay Teachers to create a very simple scavenger hunt. 

After the hunt, I sent kids home with an activity packet that included the following: 

• Squishmellow Roll and Draw (Art Workshop on Teachers Pay Teachers)
• Design Your Own Squishmallow Worksheet (Miss Buchko's Art Room Resources on Teachers Pay Teachers)
• Color Scarlet the Strawberry, Sunny the Bee, and Wendy the Frog (Monday Mandala)