Picnic Time for Teddy Bears

And another Teddy Bear Picnic has come and gone. This was our eighth annual. Sometimes we have a big crowd - sometimes small. This year it was small. We had ten kids who were able to make it - and some of them had to leave early. The biggest crowd we ever had was 23.

Some highlights:

• 120 water balloons brought and filled by one of the moms!

• handmade beanbags. Pippi sewed them together last night on her sewing machine - today the kids added beans and sewed up the final seam.

• Fun crafts with sticky foam and craft sticks.

• Teddy Bear tag (kind of like freeze tag only getting your Teddy bear back unfreezes you.)

And then - in honor of the Olympics we had a Teddy Bear Olympics.
Events included (these were created on the fly as we did them):

• The Teddy Bear Hoop Jump (throw the bear through the hula hoop - qualifying bears had to get through a moving hoop)

• Teddy Bear Long Jump (which bear can go the farthest when thrown)

• Teddy Bear synchronized diving/tossing. (by far the funniest competition - and we had an uneven number so Harry's bear did a lone synchronized dive)

• Teddy Bear Slide (which bear goes the farthest after being pushed down the slide)

• Teddy Bear gymnastics. Each bear had 30 seconds to do a floor routine on the blue blanket.
  

Everyone got lots of gold medals (symbolized by candy.) Prizes at the Teddy Bear Picnic are always candy - and everyone gets their fair share - but boy you'd think some of these kids had never seen Lifesavers and Smarties before.

And as the song says:
At six o'clock their Mommies and Daddies will take them home to bed
because they're tired little Teddy Bears.

(only in our case they left at 2:30)