Timber Rattlers Party

Recently, we threw an end of the season celebration for my son’s little league team. They were the Timber Rattlers. Here is how we quickly set up a simple, inexpensive, and fun party in our home to celebrate a group of 10-year-old little leaguers. Hoping these ideas and printables can be helpful to you if you are either celebrating a baseball team or hosting a snake or reptile theme party.

Decorations:

We made large swirly snakes out of poster board.

I purchased this pack of poster board from Walmart and used an extra black piece I had. As a child, I used to make swirly snakes from paper plates by cutting a continuous spiral. This same concept applied to a large poster board were how these snakes were made. A thin strip of red construction paper was glued on as a tongue. We cut a triangle at the ends and curled them a bit by rolling them with a pencil. I was on the fence about adding eyes, but the kids decided they liked them just as they were. This was super quick and easy. As a bonus, it costed less than five dollars for us to decorate this large space.

Here is my youngest posing next to one of the snakes. For reference, only half the length of the snake body is shown.

I meant to make large baseball cards of the kids as we had made in previous years but ended up printing out the kids’ photos way too big. I just went with it and made some pennant banners and hung up these word wall baseballs to further decorate the space in the kids’ playroom.

My kids always love helping me to decorate. They helped me to wrap painter’s tape around some pool noodles to create snake bodies. We then blew up giant punch balloons for the heads and used a mix of construction paper to create their eyes and tongue.

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

The banner is best printed out onto white cardstock, hole punched on two sides at the top, and strung up with ribbon, yarn, or twin. We used white yarn.

We wrapped pool noodles in tan fabric we had (from an old bedsheet), and covered them up with tan pantyhose to create large baseball bats. This is similar to how we previously created our no sew flying broomsticks. Another white punch balloon became a giant baseball with a red Sharpie. I also filled the shelves with all of our baseball books and snake stuffies that my kids had.

Outside we made pool noodles snakes. We just stuck wooden chopsticks on the ground and inserted pool noodles to create the loops. Each snake was made from three and a half pool noodles and a thin strip of red pool noodle was inserted as the snake tongue.

This was a very easy and inexpensive way to decorate a large space in our backyard. The kids enjoyed posing with them, crawling under them, hurdling over them, and finally for a group of ten year old boys, this later became an invitation to grab a pool noodle and fight!

Party Activities:

This was the setup in the kids’ playroom on party day. I filled their cubicles with all their books about snakes, snake eggs (plastic easter eggs), added some baseball mitts and caps, and turned their play kitchen into a pretend concession stand. I also laid out four activities on the craft table. For more details see below.

I included all their usual favorites when they visit the concession stand at the ballpark. Cut up pool noodles became freezer pops. Scrunched up tissue paper in plastic cups were snow cones. Paper bags cut in half were made into bags of popcorn and peanuts. More scrunched up tissue paper in a squeeze bottle was used as ketchup. Lastly, some cups were made more baseball-ish with a red Sharpie. The rest of the printables I used in this setup were made a few years ago and are available here.

The kids colored. I made these simple pennant banners that are free to download below. They decorated them then cut and taped them to wooden craft sticks.

This file is best printed out onto white cardstock and given to kids along with a variety of markers and crayons. It can also be used as a template to trace onto felt and given to kids with felt letter stickers to create their own unique pennant banners. We’ve done this in previous years.

The kids also colored these cute hot dogs, cut them out, and used in the pretend concession stand I had set up. These coloring pages are available here. I create more coloring pages here.

I made a template that is free to download here for kids to create swirly paper snakes similar to the ones we hung up in our kitchen.

For the setting of a party, I used the template to cut many different colored snakes out of construction paper. I also added googly eyes, various shapes (oval, triangles, and diamonds), as well as some thin red paper strips for snake tongues.

The kids made baseball players out of toilet paper rolls.

We always save toilet paper and paper towel rolls for this sort of occasion. My kids helped me to paint the tops peach and the bottom two thirds orange using regular acrylic paint. We left some tops unpainted for some players who had darker skin tones. I filled a chip tray with orange easter egg halves (for the players’ helmets), foam number stickers, and googly eyes. My daughter created a mini version of her brother. He was number twenty-one last season.

Little sister also created one using just crayons and marker. She chose to use the darker skin tone as brother gets really tan in the summer.

I purchased these tattoos and set up a little station with paper towels and a bowl of water. I liked how this pack came with already perforated tattoos. There were plenty included that I will be saving for future parties and to put into treat bags for the next ball season.

We had a little photo booth area. I propped my son’s large baseball beanbag next to a large wooden cutout of a baseball glove we made three years ago. The back of the the glove is a giant shell from my daugher’s mermaid birthday. The photo props are free to download below.

There are six photo props included. They say BEST TEAM EVER!, BATTER UP!, CHAMPIONS!, GO RATTLERS!, HISS!, and SO DANG FUN! They are best printed out onto white cardstock and attached to wooden dowels, straws, or large craft sticks. For extra durability, I like to glue them onto black poster board, cut a large outline around, then hot glue them to wooden dowels.

Here is my goofy family posing with them! The backdrop was made from black poster board. I just eyeballed and cut a large Rattlers R. Small balloons and a red Sharpie were used to create the rest of this easy and simple backdrop.

Outside, I set up the water table with plastic easter eggs (as rattlesnake eggs) and these toy snakes.

This was really enjoyed by kids of all ages and then for ten year old boys, became a water gun refill station as well.

My husband also set up Wiffle Ball which is always a hit with little leaguers.

Food:

We kept the menu simple and baseball concession stand like, serving mainly hot dogs and nachos. We also included a variety of easy themed snacks and desserts.

I used an edible food pen to create stitches on brie and served it with a mix of crackers. This took about two minutes to prep and was quickly enjoyed. As you can see, I wasn’t able to take a proper picture before it was dug into.

We used a red Sharpie to draw stitches onto white pudding cups. We also did this throughout the spring ball season to add to team treat bags. My kids always enjoyed helping me to do this. As a bonus, this can be prepped ahead of time ready to pull out on party day.

My kids helped me to make brownies. We just used a box mix. As we didn’t have a baseball mitt cookie cutter, we used a seashell cookie cutter and cut out a little triangle between the thumb and first finger. We squished the scraps together to form a large bat and added marshmallows decorated with red edible ink as baseballs.

I made printable baseball caps and used a Sharpie to create the team in string cheese. The boys loved this and some even saved theirs to take home. I plan to make another plate like this to take to my daughter’s upcoming softball team party.

We served deviled eggs and labelled them as rattlesnake eggs. I also found this delicious recipe from the kitchn to make homemade Cracker Jack. Here is my son with his grandpa posing in front of the food. You can never have too much food for ten-year-old boys.

For drinks, we had snake venom. It was orange sherbet mixed with ginger ale and wasn’t actually deadly.

I arranged watermelon slices with the rind up to create a rattlesnake. I used my edible ink marker to draw red pupils onto two marshmallows and attached a red watermelon tongue to finish the look.

I used free clip art to make the toppers and quickly cut them out using a 2 inch circle punch, attaching them to black and white straws with a little tape. I found the gummy twin snakes here and added some to the top of others. I used this recipe to make the vanilla cupcakes. The frosting is vanilla buttercream from Two Sisters.

You may also be interested:

More Baseball Party Ideas

To see my other parties click here.

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

If you use these printables or party ideas, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.

I hope this post helps you to celebrate your young Rattlers or snake fan!