Party decorations for your Olympic Themed Kids Party are a cinch to pull together on a shoestring budget.
From the first and second articles in this series on creating a 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics celebrations, you can start to understand the concept behind this fabulous theme. The continuation of the discussion of the decorations is listed below:
Decorations
Sports Equipment Vignettes
- Place vignettes of sports equipment throughout the party space.
- For instance, a collections of jump ropes is meaningless alone, even though you may be planning to use the ropes in a party game or challenge. But when you add a pair of satin boxing shorts, an Everlast muscle shirt, a mouthguard, rolls of athetic tape, a punching bag and a spit bucket to the jump rope grouping, you've created an artistic, thematic display that can also be used in the implementation of the party games! Clever!
- Another suggested vignette could be a swimming display with a variety of racing swimsuits, noseplugs, swimcaps, towels. Add in some flip flops and a stopwatch to complete the vignette.
Famous Olympian Photo Bios
- Use the history and excitement of the real Olympics to add some decorating interest to your party space.
- Download Internet images of famous American Olympians like Jesse Owens, Mohammad Ali, Babe Didriksen and Mary Lou Retton. Add in some photos of great Olympians from other nations like Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, British track star Sebastian Coe and Soviet weightlifter Vasiliy Aleseyev (who reportedly began each day with an omelette cooked from 36 eggs!).
- Print out these photos using your color printer and some sturdy inkjet paper, and then adhere the photos (with educational captions) to several sheets of poster board or foam core.
- These posters may be placed on easels, attached to walls or suspended from the ceiling as dividers for different areas within your party space.
Banners and Flags
- Every Olympic Village sports a plethora of flags representing all of the competing nations. You'll also find banners representing the different competitive events suspended from every light pole and overpass. Finally, the host city always creates its own logo banners that decorate the region and greet the athletes and spectators from the moment they cross the border.
- While duplicating this effect may be cost-prohibitive for a small scale birthday party, it's useful to borrow the basic concept and down-size it for your own needs. For example, gather any flags that you currently own, hang them along an inconspicuous line or rope that is suspended across the length of the party space.
- Don't fret if the flags are mostly the Stars and Stripes or if they're diffent sizes – you are trying to capture the feel of the Olympics!
This series will continue and offer suggestions for activities and games.
The copyright of the article Olympic Party Decorations in Entertaining is owned by Janice Benoit. Permission to republish Olympic Party Decorations in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
