Kickoff to Kindergarten

My youngest daughter started kindergarten this past Monday.  She was so excited to start the year, and we are excited to see her grow and learn.  With all the back to school supplies in stores, I decided to make this milestone the theme of my monthly dinner.  Even though these dinners are for my girlfriends, I had my kindergartner help with some aspects of the party. So fun!

Invite:  I designed the invite on PhotoShop using lots of bright colors.  I used a Kindergarten font for most of the text.

Entry Decor:  My husband found this easel at a thrift store for $5 a month ago, and it made the perfect entry.  My 5th grade daughter wrote the theme in chalk to match the invitation. For the door sign, I used a Welcome sign I already owned and added "Class of 2032" and a classroom bulletin board border I grabbed from the dollar section.  By the way...can you believe my daughter is the Class of 2032? Seems like forever away, although I imagine it will be here before I am ready!

Table Decor:  I had a lot of fun decorating the table.  Lots of bright colors and fun school items made it easy to throw together.

For the centerpiece, I bought 20 rulers from Target to lay on the table as a small table runner.  On top of the rulers, I had the giant wooden pencil that I made for my Teacher Appreciation monthly dinner in 2017.  You can find the tutorial on how to make it here.

I found the crayon holder and the red box at Target.  I filled them with school supplies I already own.  The letter flashcards I also got at the dollar store and the addition flash cards I made out of cardstock.

I used a can to make this colored pencil holder.  The composition book was part of the bulletin board set I got, so I just cut it to fit around the can and glued it.

I love how cute the place settings turned out. For the placemat, I printed out an image of kindergarten lined paper as large as I could make it for an 8.5x11 piece of typing paper.  I did this twice for each place setting, and then cut and taped the papers together to make it taller than the plate on both sides. I used red paper plates from the dollar store and cut cardstock to make an apple stem and leaf.  The mini chalkboards I found at Michaels.  I used my Cricut to cut vinyl letters to match for each guest.

For the place card, I had my kindergartener write each guest's name on these bulletin board cards I bought from the dollar store.  She did such a good job, and the guests loved the personal touch!  I bought mini playdough and sliced the top of each lid to use as a holder for the place card.

The napkin ring was made from rulers I found in the same $3 bulletin board pack that had the composition books and the colored pencil border from the entry sign (and banner which you can see below).

This banner was super easy.  I found the pencils and the notebook paper already created on Pinterest, so it was a free download for the letters I needed.  The colored pencil border was from the bulletin board pack.  I just cut them apart to use for the banner.

I always have fun trying to create something clever for my wine labels.  I'm pretty happy with what I came up with this time.  Kindergartners start to learn how sounds can be made into words, so I designed my red wine after that idea. Bed, fed, and red for practicing the -ed sound.  Since kindergartners also learn to write, I crafted the wine wine to just switch out "write" for "white" and created a pencil as the background.  The menu cards I used throughout the party, this one being W is for Wine.  My older daughter helped color them.

For wine charms, I went simple and just tied crayons with ribbon around the stem of the glasses.  Simple and easy.

Menu:  You could do anything for your menu.  If I had this party for kids it would be different, but since my guests were all adults, I tried to use the alphabet letters to create a theme.  We started with A is for Apple Walnut Salad.  The salad included spring mix, sliced apples, blueberries, walnuts, and crumbled goat cheese.  I served it with a honey balsamic vinaigrette.

For the letters B and C, I served Biscuits and Carrots.

For the main dish, I made Chicken Drumsticks baked in the oven. I made a garlic-Parmesan sauce which gave them even more flavor.

F is for Fruit.  To round out the meal, I made a simple fruit salad with just watermelon and blueberries.

For dessert, I made these cute pencil cupcakes  I designed the wrapper on Photoshop and piped on the frosting.

Favor: Pencils made out of toilet paper rolls and cardstock were my favor.  I filled each with taffy.  These were a challenge to make with a bit of trial and error.  The key for me was to make the cones for the pencil part and glue them in place first.  It didn't work well to do the eraser side first.  After the tip was in place I added the taffy and glued the eraser in place.  Lastly, I glued the gold paper and wrapped the silver vinyl before adding the No.2 to the top in vinyl.

My daughter loved her first day of kindergarten, and the fact that this party was themed in her honor.  Milestones go so quickly, it was fun to capture this memory and celebrate it.  Hope you enjoyed seeing this fun party!