Red River Valley

Ranch   Party
Hoe-down
Farmyard / Barnyard Party

Invitations:
Come on over to our Ranch for a Birthday Hoe-down for our ranch hand
inside:
Ranch address:
Day:
Time:
RSVP: To the Ranch Boss  

Another idea:  Use green cardstock (1/4 sheet) with Mrs. Grossman's farm stickers.
Text:   It's (name) 2nd birthday - down on the farm! Please join us for a birthday brunch on Date!
Us ranch hands and cowpokes will be all rounded up at (123 Main Street) at "time" a.m. Come in your cutest farmer duds, rustle up our ponies and have your picture taken with a (faux) cow! Nancy Merrill

Decorations:
Make a sawhorse cow or horse. Cover a sawhorse or a suitable bench with material cut to fit...legs can show. Attach posterboard cut out of the animal head. Add tail. Use for a photo op.

Wagons with straw or raffia, use for a hay wagon ride. Small packs of real alfalfa can be purchased from pet stores in bags used for rabbit feed.

Decorate in the fall time with cornstalks, pumpkins, dried corn and gourds.  Make a scarecrow.

Red, forest green and cow balloons, and the centerpiece can be a Fisher-Price barn surrounded by plastic animals and raffia "hay" For FUN: pony rides. You could also invite someone with a friendly pig or goat for petting (check out your local 4-H kids!). We also did Polaroids of the kids next to a cow cutout.

Cake and food:
Barn Cake:  Bake 3 8x8 cakes and one loaf 9x5. Stack the square cakes, frosting between them. Place the loaf cake on top, shaping roof to look like a barn. Use chocolate graham crackers for the roof. Frost with red colored frosting. Add white piped frosting for edging on sides, doors, etc. Doors can also be grahams. Shredded wheat for hay.

Another Cake:  Baked in a 9x13 pan, frosted white with crushed-cookie dirt, topped with a toy tractor, trailer and little animals and veggies.

For a quick cake:  Use two round cakes and stack them.  Frost white and put on black cow spots. -
Misty Mitchell

Serve a chicken feed mix: pretzels, corn pops, other grain cereals, etc

Serve punch in a punch bowl packed inside a wash tub filled with ice. Misty Mitchell

Goodies:
Use white lunch bags, paint them with 'cow' spots using black markers OR tie them up in a bandana tied with jute.  Fill with bandanas, plastic farm animals, other farm, barnyard items, Jolly Rancher candy, cow balloon, and Cow Tails candy- Nancy Merrill & Misty Mitchell

Games and Activities:
Decorate "milk pails." Find small metal or plastic pails and have barnyard/farm stickers for the kids to decorate them.

Egg hunt: Collect eggs (plastic Easter eggs) that the farm chickens have laid about the yard. Use the milk pails. Stuff the eggs with yellow pom-poms (egg yolks) place one or two per egg. The kids open them and count how many yolks they have. One with the most is the winner.

Egg toss...toss plastic eggs into a basket(s) of hay. Could set this up like a ball toss with each egg being tossed into the farther basket. Give points per basket.

Square Dance

Hay wagon races: if you have enough wagons, team up the kids (or kids and parents) and have a race.

Animal charades: put the name of barnyard animals in a bowl and let the kids act them out.

Pin the tail on the cow or pig

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