Lisa Kothari is the founder of pepperspollywogs.com.

It’s that time of year when you begin to plan your 4th of July celebration, and you want to include your nieces and nephews in the fun, too, of course! Check below for easy, budget-friendly ways to make the 4th of July full of fun!

Decorations

-Instead of filling vases with flowers, fill them with blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. This is yummy and festive-looking. Guests can scoop the berries out and add whipped cream for a truly red, white, and blue treat!

-Use different-shaped vases to hold dips and chips as well. These make great centerpieces as well as unique serving dishes.

-Mix and match red, white, and blue solid paperware. Cloth napkins in the same colors would also add an elegant touch.

-Roll butcher paper out onto your party table. Scatter red, white, and blue crayons across the table for the kids to color with while eating.

-Fill balloons with red, white, and blue crinkled paper. Have the kids pop the balloons for festive explosions of color.

-Using pop-cork placemats, attach the kids’ names to the pop corks for easy seating arrangements. The kids can take their pop cork home along with their tags; so use red, white, and blue colors to make them festive.

-Sprinkle red, white, and blue confetti and candy around the table.

Activities

-Have the kids make small U.S. flags and place them into red, white, and blue sand pails that have sand filler at the bottom! Turn this decoration into a game. Divide the kids into two teams and have them run, grab a flag, and quickly walk back to the team line, where the next person must do the same. The team that has all of the flags in hand most quickly, wins! Let the kids take the flags home as goodies!

-The kids can make a sidewalk chalk mural. Have red, white, and blue sidewalk chalk on hand to give to the kids and let them create their own patriotic mural. They can create an American flag, fireworks, the Washington Monument, etc. This is a great activity for a dry 4th of July day!

-Boil a dozen eggs, and color some red and blue (be sure to keep some white)! Have an Egg Spoon Relay Race. Divide the kids into two teams, and provide each team with a spoon and eggs. The kids must balance a colored egg on their spoon and walk quickly from one end of the yard to the other and return. If the egg drops, the team member must begin again. The first team with all members completing the relay race, wins!

-For older kids, water balloons will be loads of fun. A fun twist on traditional water balloon games is to create a small hole in each balloon, and then fill it with water. Let the kids toss the leaking balloon, which will become a bit of a time bomb as you don’t want to be the last one holding it when it finally runs out of water! Quick, easy, and fun!

-Play classic relay races and picnic games, such as ring toss, sack race, and three-legged race.

-Have the girls add red, white, and blue star beads to their shoelaces for added fun.

-The kids can make their own creative rockets with cardboard tubes, tin foil, craft paper, tissue paper, glue, markers, ribbon, and child-friendly scissors.

-If you are looking to have a parade, try a Things That Go parade.

Tasty Treats

-Have a red, white, and blue taste test with the kids. Put out all sorts of foods and spices in a series of small dishes. Blindfold the kids and have the kids taste the foods and spices, and guess what they are. Ideas for tasting include salt, ketchup, blueberries, strawberries, French salad dressing, mayonnaise, sponge cake, strawberry jam, pepper jack cheese, beets, tomatoes, garlic, bananas, cherries, etc.

-Freeze blueberries and raspberries in ice cube trays to make star spangled cubes.

-Make a rocket pop drink. Fill a glass with ice cubes. Carefully pour cranberry juice, blue Gatorade, and 7-Up into the glass directly over the ice cubes to maintain the patriotic colors.

-Using blackberries, cut up/halved strawberries, and bananas, have the kids create a fruit flag using the fruit pieces. They can place this on a cookie tray, and then you can lay it out to serve the rest of the guests. The kids can also make mini flags for themselves. You can also provide lollipop sticks to the kids to skewer the fruits with.

-Using a star cookie cutter, make up a batch of patriotic Jell-O Jigglers, star sugar cookies, cheese sticks, and sandwiches filled with cream cheese and blackberry jam.

-Make a batch of cupcakes and have the kids frost them and decorate them with red, white, and blue sprinkles.

So much fun for little money and time! Happy 4th of July planning!

Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Kothari
Published: July 1, 2013