Ranch Party  -  Hoe-down
Farmyard / Barnyard Party

Invitations: Come on over to our Ranch for a Birthday Hoe-down for our ranch hand inside list the Ranch address. Day, Time, and ask them to RSVP: To the Ranch Boss   Another idea:  Use green cardstock (1/4 sheet) with 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!

Farm Friends   Barnyard Party theme

Another idea:  Cut into shape of a barn and have the doors open to read all the party information. Would also make great Thank You cards that open to show a picture of the child and the words "Thank Moo."  Use a Polaroid to take the pictures.

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 Polaroid's 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. -

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

Use or rent a horse troth to fill with ice and cans of soda.   Serve Fried Chicken, Corn on the Cob, Hotdogs, Hamburgers and other Country Home style foods.

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

Bandanas

Cowboy hats

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

Pig Races:  Blow up large pink balloons- attach a curly pink ribbon to one end and draw a pig face on the balloon- use flyswatters to swat at the "pigs" to have "pig races"

Playing pin the tail on the cow

Barrel racing using stick horses

Find the prize in the hay stack

Toss the pig:  Similar to a water balloon toss but use all pink balloons and tie a curly ribbon at the end to resemble a tail.   For an extra touch add a piece of paper cut in the shape of a pigs nose.

Pony Rides

More Ideas toddler / pre-school set~

These ideas were chosen as  'centers' the guests can enjoy at their own pace.  In addition to the centers, you can have a rocking horse, swing set or other toddler/pre-school activities.  

1.  Stick ponies- large drawing of a pony head copied on appropriate colored paper. The party guest cuts it out and attaches it to a yard stick.

2.  Create a "farm" in your back yard.  Make a barn out of a large cardboard box.  Paper farm animals can be stapled to the fence. 

3.  The guests gather eggs from the chicken coop.  Create a chicken coop by cutting three sides out of a box and paint it brown.  Staple chicken wire to the inside of the box.  Put a layer of straw on the
inside of the box and added marshmallow chicken Peeps (only around Easter).  Using an egg carton the guest gather the eggs and put them inside their egg carton.  Cut the egg carton to accommodate only four eggs.  Some of the eggs can hold prizes and others can be empty.  All of the quests should receive two eggs with prizes.

4.  The guest could sit around the pond and feed the ducks.  A toddler pool can be filled with rubber ducks.  The guest feeds the rubber ducks corn also known as yellow Styrofoam packing pieces.