Baseball Party

A few weeks ago, we threw an end of the year celebration for my son’s little league team. It was my husband’s first year coaching baseball and the team did amazing! With most people around us being double vaccinated, we also felt much safer about hosting. This was also before we knew about the Delta variant. The kids were just so thrilled to have people come into our home and not just drive-by.

Decorations:

I always start by looking at what we already have to turn into themed decor. White glitter Christmas ornaments that I used as pearls for my daughter’s mermaid birthday became baseballs with the addition of a little red yarn.

These were so simple. Because the ornaments had white glitter, the yarn naturally stuck to them without requiring any additional adhesive. I attached them to our kitchen ceiling with some fishing wire and a little scotch tape.

The huge purple seashell that I had made for my daughter’s birthday flipped over and painted in brown became a baseball mitt.

My kids love these oversized photo props. They always have fun painting them and afterwards enjoy posing with them.

White tubs we had around to help house water toys for the water table became baseball-ish with the addition of red masking tape. My kids also helped me with this. So simple, inexpensive, and removable.

I printed out the kids’ photos wearing a Yankees baseball hat in poster size and put them on blue poster board to create giant baseball cards to hang up.

My husband’s jerseys wrapped around some pillows on the couch made for some quick and easy decor.

I also made a printable banner that said Way to Go Yankees that is free to download.

My kids always love helping me to decorate so I made some printable pennant banners that they helped to color, cut, and hang up. This is also free to download below.

The kids also went to town decorating with window markers. My son even used his Lego table to make a baseball team.

I also took this opportunity to help my daughter review all the high frequency words she learned in kindergarten and together with her siblings, we created this baseball word wall.

Party Activities:

I turned my son’s death star pinata into a giant baseball with a little tape repair, white tissue paper, white crepe pape, and more red masking tape.

The kids always enjoy helping me to create and fill these gigantic homemade pinatas. The cost to make them is minimal leaving us more room to splurge on filling them.

The kids colored, made felt banners using the template from above, and made a toilet paper roll craft.

My kids love color by number or color by math. It is a great way to work on early numeracy and addition. We paired this activity with a dice to make it more like a game and they really enjoyed it. I create more math activities here.

This was fairly simple and inexpensive to setup. I always have a stockpile of toilet paper and paper towel rolls for this sort of occasion. I painted the tops beige and the bottom two thirds white using regular acrylic paint and filled a chip tray with blue easter egg halves (for the players’ helmets), foam stickers, and googly eyes. My son created a mini version of himself. He was number twenty-two last season and usually isn’t so serious.

We played Cornhole.

The kids helped me to paint this piece and I made bean bag baseballs out of white felt, ziploc bags filled with popcorn kernels and beans, and hand stitched some red pom-pom ribbon to them. The pom-pom ribbon was reused from my Lunar New Years’ lanterns.

Outside, I set up the water table, turned our sandbox into a sensory table, and my husband set up Wiffle Ball. We also are very lucky to live close to a community pool so everyone got to enjoy some swimming as well.

As we didn’t have any baseball player figurines and as the kids already have so many toys, they turned their dinosaurs into a baseball team using rectangular pieces of white felt to make their jerseys. The kids simply wrapped felt scraps around their dinosaurs, securing them with a little scotch tape at the bottom and added felt number stickers (a Dollar Tree find). I thought it was hilarious how they wanted to make big numbers on the jerseys like two hundred twenty-two. This was also a good activity to review with my preschooler and soon-to-be first grader what 13 or 41 looked like as both have a habit of writing their numbers all mixed up.

We also turned our play kitchen into a concession stand.

Food:

We kept the menu simple and baseball concession stand like, serving hot dogs and nachos. My husband also made his delicious barbecue and I made these cupcakes using these toppers that are free to download below.

This file is best printed out onto white cardstock, cut out with a two inch circle punch, and adhered to toothpicks with a little scotch tape. These would also be great on water bottles or utensil wraps as well.

Favors:

We purchased these tattoos to pass out. I also made the kids personalized coloring pages.

Your child may also enjoy:

I create more printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.

I hope this post helps you to celebrate your little leaguer or young Yankee fan!