Photo courtesy of alisstair.pott

Invite some friends and have a full-moon tea party. It’s night time and the moon looks so round and beautiful. Your children should have a tea party. The wonderful thing about this tea party theme is that it’s suitable for girls and boys. Boys often don’t like the phrase tea party because they think it’s too “girly” (one of their words…). Then for boys, just call it a full-moon party.

What decorations do you need?

Decoration for this tea party is very easy and fun to make. Sometimes it’s great to have a tea party outside so you can enjoy the real full moon. But often we can’t have all the things we want.

So if you can’t have the real moon, make a moon yourself or buy a moon. To make a moon yourself, you will need round yellow balloons. You can buy the balloon in the store and inflate it yourself or you can just buy one. But don’t buy flying balloon, then your moon will just flying around. It’s quite difficult to observe something if it keeps moving around!

Tie the balloon to a string and stick it on the ceiling, right in the middle of the table. Try to adjust the length of the string so it’s at the right height. Make sure the children can see the balloon but it’s not too close to the table. If the ceiling is too high, you can tie it in the middle of the window. Either choice is fine.

To be more creative in this full-moon tea party, you can use aluminum foil and cut them into the stars. Tape a few into the string and stick them near the window. Try NOT to block the view of the real moon. Decorations are great, but the real thing are much…much better.

Secondly, you can find a table cloth that has moon and stars it. If it’s a bit difficult to find such design, you can buy dark-color table cloth and place some moon and stars stickers on it. You can also find napkins that have star-design.

This is quite a popular design so I think you can find them in most dollar store. If not, then you can use white napkins and decorate a few star stickers at the corners. Don’t place them in the middle because the sticker makes the napkins a bit tricky to use. Place a table (preferable a round table — we want to stay in theme, don’t we?) near a window so if the children want to see the real moon, they can. After all, this is a full-moon tea party…

Want to make invitations for tea party?

If you planned this full-moon tea party ahead, you can also send tea-party invitations to the children. It’s very simple. You just take a yellow construction paper, fold it in half. Cut out a circle. Place some star and moon sticker outside and inside of the invitations. Write a message inside and voila, you have the invitation ready to be distributed.

The foods and drink for full-moon tea party?

Because this is a full-moon tea party, emphasis on the word tea, there should be tea pots and cups.
Real tea contains high level of caffeine that it’s not suitable for young children. Also the taste wouldn’t be pleasant to young palates that have get used to cookies and sweet cakes.
So you can use orange juice, lemonade, or any other juice. Tea comes in varieties of color so any juice would look just like tea.

For example, orange juice looks like orange-clove tea, lemonade looks like ginger tea, grape juice looks like black tea…. It’s tempting to use soda but sodas kind of reduce the essence of a tea party because of its distinguished sweetness.

Now for the foods, you have lots of option here. But if you want some suggestions, here are some to get to start. Because we want to stay in the full-moon theme, we want the foods to take the shape of the moon.

* You can take apples or oranges and cut them into slices like a crescent moon. I know it’s the full-moon tea party but a whole apple is kind difficult to eat.

* You can bake or buy some sugar cookie. If the children prefer chocolate chip cookies then let them have it (they are kind of rocky moons because all of chocolate chips, but well they still look round, so it’s fine!). If you want to add some more excitement into the party, you can make star-shaped cookies using the cookie cutter.

* You can also buy doughnuts in the store and decorate them at home. Buy a few big doughnuts and lots of little round doughnuts in all kinds of flavors. Cut the big doughnuts into 1/2 and place them in a nice place. Then place lots of little doughnuts around. It looks just like tea cakes.

* You can also serve star-shape cheese with round crackers. Using the cookie cutter and cut slices of cheese into stars. Buy some round crackers. Place the cheese in the middle of the crackers and serve. If you are creative, cut slices of deli meat into star-shaped and place them in the middle of cheese and crackers.

This full-moon tea party menu has nutritional value since it contains meat, orange juice, grains, cookies, and cheese. Talk a about a menu, you can use a round yellow construction paper and write the menu in it. This makes a nice addition to the table and to the theme of the party.

Activities to do in a full-moon tea party…

The most fun activity in the full-moon tea party is to observe the beautiful moon. You can buy toy telescopes at the store or you can make your own. It’s simple, easy, and fun.

* Paper towel often have the rolled-up cardboard in the middle. If you can find several of these cardboard, use them. If not, you can buy some black construction paper and roll it into a tube. Tape the sides together so it will not unroll.
* Cut the plastic wrap into small squares. Tape it to one end of the tube. Decorate the telescopes with star and moon sticker.
The second activity the children can do is to make up and read stories about the moon. You can buy books about the moon ahead of time for the children to choose.
Extra stuff for full-moon party…
If the children want you to tell them a story about the moon and you are kind of stuck. Here is one of my favorite stories that you can use.

…Long time ago there was a man, named Pine, lived with his wife in the forest. Every morning, he had to gather woods and fruits and bring them to the market to sell. His wife was a nice woman but she is very forgetful. Things just go into one ear and out of the other.

One day, when the man couldn’t sell much of his goods, he had to stay late in the market. When he finally was finally done, it was already dark. On his way home, Pine felt sick and had to lay down near a big tree. He felt asleep…

Pine gradually waked up when it’s dawn, but he couldn’t move. His head was spinning and he felt really weak. He couldn’t see clearly but he saw a person standing next to him.
It was an old man with white hair, white long beard, wearing a long white robe. Kindness were radiating from this old man eyes.

The man in white looked at Pine for awhile, and then he gave Pine a few green leaves and seeds. He told Pine to chew the leaves and grow the seeds. One thing that the man in white told Pine to remember is to never waters the tree. The man disappeared.

Pine chewed the leaves and started to feel better. He reached home by noon and immediately grows the seeds. When the plant grew enough leaves, Pine took the leaves to the market and sell.
Pine let people try and they gradually feel better just like Pine did. The leaves were very popular and useful that everybody came to Pine for them.

Pine had to spend a lot of time in the market; he didn’t have time to tend for the tree. So he told his wife to take care of the tree for him. He had to tell her many time DO NOT water the tree. But she was very forgetful and Pine should have known it.

One day when she was drinking water near the tree, her friends came to visit her. In a forgetful moment, she threw the water to the tree and left.

When Pine was getting home, he saw his tree was about to float up. He ran as fast he could. He grabbed one of the roots and tried to pull the tree down.

No use, the tree gradually flied up to the moon and took Pine with it. Now when there is a full-moon, you may see a shape in the moon, that’s probable Pine looking down to Earth and remember the good old times.

Have fun at the full-moon tea party theme…