Goodnight Moon Celebration

Did you know this book is 70 years old? Cause for celebration, I think!

Guests were greeted by our Goodnight Moon window-inspired doorway, done with yellow and green streamers (and a red balloon!):

I made this quick and easy "Goodnight Moon" rectangular bunting to hang above the food area. I enlarged the cover image, printed and cut out the letters. They're glued onto red and green construction paper, with a black ribbon running throughout. This was inspired by My House of Giggles.

I used several items from the Great Green Room throughout the event, like the window in between the words in the bunting. Here they are in a pdf.

I also enlarged these images and used our poster printer to make wall decorations:

For this one, I used yellow foam board to cut out the frame shape. I hung Command Strips on the cow jumping over the moon picture to hang the frame. That way, guests could grab the frame and use it for a photo prop. Like so:

I also had a single red balloon floating around the room.

Now, there's not a whole lot of plot happening in this book, so all activities had to revolve around the illustrations.

At one table, we had Design Your Own Goodnight Moon Picture. Using the individual images I edited, I uploaded them to the library's Cricut and did a Print & Cut (first on regular paper, that they could glue on, but later I got wise and printed them on full-page sticker paper so they could just be stuck on).

I set out green construction paper with some crayons and glue. If you really wanted to get fancy, you could do a red floor on the green paper as well. But for the age group attending, just a green page worked fine. Here's the table, all ready for patrons:

I also had our oversized edition of "Goodnight Moon" on display (you can see in the background) and this great YouTube video of Susan Sarandon reading the story on a loop going on our projector screen.

Our next table was a Mouse Craft. I had used this craft in the past for Story Time. I originally saw it on Pinterest, but there was no link or tutorial with the image.

I pre-cut all the little pieces to make this as well, in white and brown.

I used the Cricut again for this, using the shape inserts for the circles, rectangles, and pentagons. But I found this template helpful for the tail:

Here's the table all set up:

Next was a Goodnight Moon Story Retelling table. This was a Puppet & Props set I had already purchased for Story Time use. I just set it out on a table for kids and parents to practice retelling the story, or make up their own with the pieces.

The set is still available on Amazon, if you're interested.

Another table was the Window Craft. This idea came from the blog Mrs. Russell's Class, although I used star stickers instead of finger paints.

I had the red strips and smaller blue squares pre-cut. The moon is a cupcake wrapper and the stars are stickers.

Another table was a Goodnight Moon Matching game. This was a game we bought, but there are printable games available online for free.

Our last table was Coloring Pages & Activity Books. I found the coloring pages here and for the activity books, I used excerpts from this printable available at Life Over C's.

To complete the party, we had popcorn, lemonade, and mini cupcakes.

I used these images for the toppers:

That size worked well for the mini cupcakes. But I also made a larger 2-inch circle as well. Both can be printed from this pdf.

Also, if you're interested in using the green labels I used for the activity tables, here is a pdf of the blank templates.