Make Your Own Elmo- Homemade Party Favors

It was my quest for Rosie and I to make her party favors for her upcoming birthday party.  I kept trying to think of ideas, and kept coming up short, with play dough being my only thought.  Now I know all little ones love play dough, but how boring!  I wanted something more exciting.  So, the quest was then turned into finding a way to make a play dough party favor unique and exciting. 

 Elmo would be making a special surprise appearance at the party, which further inspired the idea to make a play dough party favor that allowed the children to make their own Elmo! I loved it!  Here is how we brought it to fruition!

First, we had to make the play dough.  We used this no cook recipe from The Imagination Tree. 

I pre-measured everything so that Rosie could easily dump the ingredients, and mix them together.  I enlisted daddy to help, so that I could take pictures while they got their hands messy.

Rosie loved dumping all the ingredients.

Mixing it all together

 Kneading it

Adding color

We needed to add A LOT of food coloring to get the desired Elmo red shade.  We used close to three 3 oz containers of red food coloring.

The end result was beautifully smooth play dough.  Be sure and add glycerin as The Imagination Tree suggests in her recipe.  This is what makes the play dough so smooth, and irresistible to touch.

Now that we had the play dough made, it was time to put the party favors together.  The Make Your Own Elmo kit was to include googly eyes, an orange pom pom for the nose, four red pipe cleaners that could act as limbs, and one black pipe cleaner for the mouth.

I wanted Rosie to be as involved in the making of the favors as possible, so I set everything out, and brought her in to help put the favors together. I bought glass jars at The Dollar Tree to use as the containers for the Elmo kits.

Putting in the pipe cleaners.

Finding orange pom poms for the noses.  This was a great sorting exercise, and helped reinforce Rosie's color recognition.

While Rosie did a fantastic job, I did have to go back and make a few adjustments once she was done helping lol.  One of the jars had about ten red pipe cleaners while a few others had none.  It only took a moment though.

Here is one of the finished Make Your Own Elmo kits.

Once all the party favors were assembled,  I added some ribbon, a cute Make Your Own Elmo tag, and a bow to finish them off.

I just love how the Elmo Party Favors turned out!

These party favors only cost a few dollars to make and I love that Rosie was so involved in making them.  Making the play dough was a great sensory activity.  Assembling the kits presented an array of learning opportunities. While we made them,  I talked with Rosie about how she was making them for her friends.  Once they were done I could tell that she was very proud of them, and so was mommy!

Rosie just loves her Elmo kit!  She has played with it a lot, and made several different Elmo creations.  While she seems to put the pieces in varying places,  I did notice that she always puts the eyes together :)

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