Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Celebration

I would have liked to have had this Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Celebration on February 1st, because that's when the golden ticket tells the kids to go to the factory. Buuuut Tuesdays are our late day and that's when I have all my big shindigs, so January 30th it was.

First I adorned the January bulletin board with an Oompa Loompa, and then I got to planning. I wanted an activity to go with each of the characters that visited the factory.

Pigskins & Pigtails had a fun idea for Veruca Salt: Help Veruca Salt Find the Good Eggs.

I hid some chocolate eggs wrapped in gold foil in only a few of these plain white plastic Easter eggs. The kids had to grab the eggs and shake them to find a "good egg" with the candy inside, which they could then eat.

On Pinterest, I found a pin of a game where kids were fishing Augustus Gloop out of a kiddie pool filled with brownish water. The only links I could find for it were dead, so I ran with the idea and here's what I came up with:

Try not to notice the watermarked mountain.

I used my brown bulletin board paper to create a chocolate river, with two 30-inch wallpaper trays in the middle.

I filled them with watered down chocolate milk and threw several laminated pictures of Augustus Gloop inside. I put a paper clip on his head and attached a magnet on the end of my fishing pole.

I already had the stick with the yarn and clothespin, from all the other times I've had some type of Go Fish game. But I wanted it to be similar to the pipe that Augustus gets sucked up in, so I put a Wonka label on a paper tube and laminated it.

I found some fun ideas of balloon-popping games for Violet, but I didn't think they'd work well for this event. So I came up with this balloon craft, inspired by the pumpkin I did for our Literary Pumpkin Carving Contest.

I had all the pieces pre-cut so all patrons had to do was blow up the balloon and stick 'em all on.

The pieces for this craft can be found here: Violet Beauregarde Balloon Craft pdf.

For mine, I just cut out the buttons and belt from construction paper, but I included templates for them in the pdf. So all you need is a balloon.

I was searching for some sort of science experiment with shrinking things down when I suddenly remembered Shrinky Dinks.

I discovered you can buy Shrinky Dink paper that you can print on (which is awesome!), so I found Charlie and the Chocolate Factory coloring pages (and some candy) to make for our party.

I borrowed my mom's toaster oven, and turned it into a television with a tin foil antenna. The kids were able to watch their Shrinky Dinks get smaller, so it was perfect for Mike Teavee!

In honor of Charlie Bucket, we had a golden ticket hunt. A couple of my volunteers hid thirty-some golden tickets around the children's room which could be exchanged for a Wonka bar once found.

We bought a box of Hershey bars and I covered them with a Wonka label. You can print the Wonka label I made here. It is designed to fit a regular sized, 1.55oz Hershey bar.

Now, I couldn't forget Willy Wonka or the Oompa Loompas.

I covered my bowling pins with laminated Oompa Loompas for another game.

We also made Willy Wonka hats. I purchased some top hats from Oriental Trading, and set out lots of foam stickers (with plenty of candy stickers) to decorate them with.

I found the Fizzy Lifting Drink label on Pinterest, though it resulted in a dead link. For the food, we had a chocolate fondue fountain with rice krispies, marshmallows, and donut holes.

We had plenty of green cups leftover from our Grinch-mas Party, so I stuck on pictures of Willy Wonka and an Oompa Loompa.

Above the food I hung an everlasting gobstopper bunting that I made. I also had a giant Wonka bar and a picture of Willy Wonka on the walls.

Two of my aunts came to help. They dressed as Mike Teavee (in charge of the toaster oven TV) and Violet Beauregarde, and I was Willy Wonka.

Some other ideas I considered for this event but didn't end up doing were: making everlasting gobstoppers out of jelly beans, making candy necklaces, doing some king of boat craft, a gumdrop pomander craft, making pipe cleaner lollipops, putting lyrics from Oompa Loompa songs on the wall in funky shapes/styles (like the movie), and the candy "experiment" where you put water on hard candy to make the colors run.