May Trollapalooza
May was an awesome party month filled with lots of singing, dancing and a brand new baby!
Program manager Melissa experienced some additional unexpected excitement at our baby shower this month! For those of you who don’t know, we provide baby showers twice a year for some of our agencies that serve new/expectant moms. During these events we celebrate the expectant mothers with catered lunch from Moe’s Southwest grill, baby shower games and prizes, and everyone takes home an itty bitty bin to celebrate that first birth day of the new child! This particular shower was for participants of The Teen Elect Program which provides services for pregnant and parent teenagers. In the middle of BINGO, one of the attendee’s water broke! Talk about a BINGO!
But, we weren’t even alluding to this new baby! A huge congratulations are in order for our Founder and fearless leader Megs Yunn, who gave birth to her fourth child in May, healthy baby Grayson Paul Yunn. Miss Megs just so happens to be our final staff spotlight this month. Check it out!
Name: Megs Yunn
Title: Founder/Executive Director
Office Spirit Animal: Meerkat
Megs, a Bethel Park native, has always had a passion for service, particularly youth engagement and leadership development in underserved communities. Megs’ many titles include mother of four, Pittsburgh Magazine’s 40 under 40 recipient, wife to Mike Yunn, Children Hospital’s Champion of Hope and Healing, and countless others. Aside from being a #momboss and #cheerchampion, her favorite color is glitter, she can quote every episode of the television show Friends, and she’s recently taken up yoga!
Birthday Party Activities
Trolls Feather Craft
Trolls love to sing and dance, are very colorful, and have awesome hair! For this craft, we used feathers to recreate their awesome hairstyles.
Supplies:
We don’t usually love to use glue at our parties because of the mess they tend to make, but this particular craft allowed us to use glue sticks with minimal clean up. The kids loved picking out their favorite color feathers! Although our original intention of the craft was for them to use the feathers for the Trolls hair, we loved seeing unique additional uses of the feathers, like as a frame, pictured above! Although there are definite benefits of teaching kids to color in between the lines, instead of stifling creativity, we also like to encourage thinking “outside the box”.
Trolls Edible Rainbow Jewelry
Another fun craft we made at our May parties was edible rainbow jewelry! These cute bracelets and necklaces are a great way to keep kids entertained during snack time. The kids loved munching while stringing the fruit loops.
Supplies:
- Fruit loops
- String
- Scissors
- Optional: bowls
In preparation for our parties, we filled small bowls with approximately a cup of fruit loops and pre-cut string. This allowed for easy distribution during the party and each child got to have their own bowl of fruit loops. This activity helped the kids work on their hand eye coordination, fine and gross motor skills, and was a nice take home item for the them.
Trolls Streamer Monster Game
This game got the kids up, moving, and working together to achieve a team goal. We turned on the Trolls soundtrack and finished with a singalong dance party!
Supplies:
- Streamers
- Music
This fun game had two parts. First, we asked the kid’s to get into groups of 3 or 4, and choose one person to turn into the Trolls monster. All of the groups received a couple rolls of streamers, and began working together to wrap their group’s monster until the streamers were completely unraveled.
For part 2, we played the freeze dance game. When the music starts, everyone begins dancing, including the monsters who are trying to dance out of their streamers. When the music stops, everyone has to freeze in whatever position they are currently in. This game resulted in so many laughs and great dance moves!
Other Trolls Activities
Next month, we have some extra special parties planned. Check back here to hear how our ice cream parties turn out! Don’t forget #smilesmatter.
Birthday cheer,
Beverly’s Birthdays staff