Under The Sea Birthday

Recently our oldest daughter turned nine and requested an under the sea themed birthday. Being just a few weeks after Christmas, it is always a challenge getting her birthday ready and special for her. Here is how my kids and I created an easy and affordable birthday party to celebrate with her family and friends. Hoping these ideas and printables may also be helpful for you and your kids whether you are planning an under the sea birthday party too or setting up an ocean themed study for your class.

Decorations:

When planning, we always start by looking at what we already have. This is especially true after Christmas when our house feels particularly full. We gathered all the kids’ sea toys, blankets, and books. I turned these giant pillows we have used for my youngest’s Sesame Street Birthday into seaweed and coral with some leftover felt.

We draped six light blue plastic tablecloths and pinned them to our living room ceiling at all four corners with clear push pins, making sure to overlap them so our entire ceiling was covered. Then we cut some fish out of black construction paper and slipped them in between the ceiling and tablecloths.

I also cut two stingrays to glide across out of black poster board. These decorations took about 20 minutes to put together and was an easy and inexpensive way to incorporate my daughter’s party theme into our living room. It has also created a very fun and cozy space for my kids to read under.

Here is the birthday girl with my parents. My kids really loved this decoration as it felt like they were really under the sea. I made my daughter a similar setup a few years ago for her mermaid sixth birthday.

We took a trip to our local library and traded our holiday books in for some non fiction sea books. My kids in their own time have learned so much about the ocean and all the intriguing creatures who dwell at various depths. I am a big fan of rotating toys and books. I feel it really helps with captivating kids’ interests and everything ends up getting more use this way.

Above our bookshelves, I made a simple fish out of posterboard and paper plates, securing everything to the wall with painter’s tape. I also created waves out of light blue and dark blue paper plates.

I made a really large fish to quickly decorate an empty wall in our kitchen. Here is the birthday girl with her sister posing in front of it while taking a break from working on her homemade pinata.

A few more fish were made and hung up in the kids’ playroom. I also pulled out some of the wooden cutouts we made previously for my daughter’s mermaid sixth birthday.

My kids helped me to convert our giant gingerbread castle into a large coral reef. We used leftover poster paper, pool noodles, and poster board from past parties to create everything. I turned our huge spiral snakes from my son’s Timber Rattlers Party into seaweed. My kids cut out fish from construction paper and used my circle punches to make different size bubbles. Glue dots were used to easily attach everything. My brother also blew up some blue balloons as bubbles for the kids to throw around.

Here our my kids making sea stars out of white poster board and mini cupcake liners.

They also made these sea turtle suncatchers from black poster board, some contact paper, and tissue paper. I cut a simple outline and used it as a template to trace onto more black posterboard. I cut a hexagon out in the middle and more rough trapezoid shapes for the rest of the shell, covered it in contact paper, and my kids went to town covering the sticky paper with tissue paper squares in green, yellow, and pink. This was very quick, inexpensive, and looked really neat from outside.

Here is my youngest daughter working on her suncatcher to help decorate for sister’s party.

We had little cousins come visit and they made these fish suncatchers to decorate more windows.

In the kitchen, we turned paper flowers that were made previously for sister’s unicorn birthday into jellyfish. We just hung them upside down and used one package of white plastic tablecloth to create flowing jellyfish tentacles. My daughter followed this wonderful tutorial from Cupcakes and Cutlery to create the ruffled tentacles out of plastic tablecloth and easily made them all in less than half an hour. To complete the space we hung up a few clear plastic Christmas ornaments as bubbles.

Over the cake table, I made this banner for my daughter. I also made some large scale fish out of yellow punch balloons. I folded plain white printer paper into fins and cut out black construction paper for eyes then attached pieces of orange plastic tablecloth as tails. I made a few more banners for her that I displayed throughout the house. They are available here and just were an easy and inexpensive way to quickly decorate a room.

Party Activities:

As my daughter’s birthday is in the middle of winter, usually with 30 degree weather, we like to make sure to have plenty of indoor activities. I like to set up a craft table that is self explanatory with all the supplies laid out, where guests can come and go as they please.

This was the setup on party day. I laid out four activities. I find that any more can be too cluttered and overwhelming. The party signs are available here.

I made some personalized coloring pages for my daughter featuring a sea themed cake and sea creatures. They can be found here. I make more personalized coloring pages for kids here.

I filled a tray with a variety of beads and the kids used pipe cleaners to make pearl bracelets.

I purchased this stack of scratch art paper from Amazon and cut out a fish shape for kids to decorate. As the set only came with a few sticks, I just cut some fruit skewers I had to size to create more. This was an activity that ended up being enjoyed by both kids and adults.

I made fish wands for the kids to color and decorate. I included a tray filled with markers, colored pencils, glue, glitter glue, sequins, googly eyes, and stickers for the kids to embellish. The fish wand craft is free to download below. Hope it can be fun for your kids too!

This file is best printed out onto white cardstock, cut, and hot glued or taped to wooden dowels. You could also glue a back side for kids to decorate too.

I purchased these tattoos on Amazon for this set up which was another low cost and fun activity for the kids. There were plenty included, enough to put into the kids’ goody bags and still have plenty leftover. I plan to save the rest to help entertain my kids at their swim meets.

I tried to use every possible corner in our downstairs space to invite kids to play. This activity setup was as easy as grabbing brother’s huge Lego bin filled with thousands of mixed up Legos and encouraging kids to get creative and build. Some kids used the large base plates we had to make their own sea creature mosaics. In hindsight it would have been nice to provide kids with more blue base plates but they made do just fine.

I used the space in our hallway to create a coloring wall. I used my projector and blew up images of fish and jellyfish then attached some paper cups filled with crayons. This is always a nice calming activity that kids can come back to.

The poster board only costs 44 cents at Walmart, making this another inexpensive activity to set up.

Here is the birthday girl’s cousin coloring away.

I pulled out some ocean themed baby toys that I almost gave away to Goodwill but am now glad we saved and we set up this easy game using a ball from the Dollar Tree as a sea urchin.

We also set up this little tent which my kids received for Christmas many years ago and filled it with some beach towels, books, and more toys for kids to explore and relax.

I made some photo props that some of the kids used to pose in front of the coral reef. They are available here. The kids really loved this play space. Behind this is a play kitchen and my daughter’s dollhouse. I added some shells and fish to their normal array of play food and some beach towels on the bookshelves nearby. The kids had mermaid picnics and tea parties, opened shell shops, and “cooked” up a lot of seafood.

We made a homemade pinata out of a large moving box and my kids painted it to look like the ocean. We glued on some seaweed, a shell, as well as clownfish to match her birthday banner. My kids always enjoy helping me to make these larger than life pinatas and filling them with their favorite candy. Here is the birthday girl ready to have her go!

I made a simple ring toss game by making a pool noodle trident for King Triton. The large cutout was made three years ago for my daughter’s Little Mermaid birthday and has since been used by my niece’s swim team for Champs. His wooden trident accidentally broke off in transit so I tried saving it by creating a new one out of pool noodles, securing it with rubber bands and hot glue. The rings for this game were made by taping pool noodles together with clear packing tape. My kids had fun testing out this game many times to ensure it would be sturdy enough.

We gathered a lot of leftover canvases we had from past projects and sorted them into art we wanted to save verses ones they were okay letting go. I gave the kids two shades of blue and white paint and they painted the canvases to look like the ocean in preparation for an art activity for my daughter’s party.

Each guest received one canvas and I laid out the following supplies for them to create their ocean scene. Shells, rocks, glass gems, and glitter glue were from the Dollar Tree. I found the stickers here on Amazon. I cut out the seaweed from construction paper. I also had a sea creature stencil from one of my kids’ Christmas presents and purchased these paint pens for the kids to use.

The kids went to town with this! Here is the birthday girl who really loved using the paint pens with the stencil.

My youngest really loved the stickers. There were so many included and they had such wonderful detail.

Here is a small sample of what was created during her party! Some kids took some of the ocean theme books off our shelves for inspiration. Others wandered to the fish wand craft to get sequins. Everyone was so proud of what they made and happily took them home to display.

My kids really enjoyed making salt dough ornaments over the holidays so we decided to make more in the shape of seahorses for the kids to decorate with paint pens. This was another easy and inexpensive setup that the kids really enjoyed.

Food:

We included the birthday girl’s favorite foods as well as a lot of kid friendly favorites. My daughter loves all things homemade so that helped a lot with keeping her party low budget. She loves Daddy’s barbecue. My kids always really enjoy coming up with fun names to match with the party theme so we called it Barnacle BBQ.

We served these delicious egg rolls that my daughters helped to roll. They don’t actually have eel in them but have a lot of pork and shrimp.

The birthday girl is a fan of my homemade potato salad. This is a great make ahead food that can just be pulled out on party day.

Kids always love homemade mac and cheese. We used shells instead of elbow macaroni noodles to keep with the theme. I just realized our food tent had a typo. It has since been corrected in the actual file that is available here.

The birthday girl is a huge fan of corn.

We had a few snack foods on the table to munch on. My kids love Shrimp Chips. Of course we also had to have goldfish crackers.

My mom made these delicious noodles with pork, shrimp, and broccoli.

We made a sherbet punch with raspberry sherbet and ginger ale and called it Coral Punch. I made a sign for her water bottles. These party signs are available here.

We had a hot cocoa bar. I used this delicious recipe from Wishes and Dishes and laid out marshmallows, chocolate chips, and mini Swedish Fish.

One of my daughter’s favorite desserts is Cherry Delight. It’s a really easy no bake dessert that my kids love to help me make. I forgot to take a proper picture before it was half eaten. We also made berry blue Jell-O in cups and placed more Swedish Fish on top for the kids similar to what we made for our Dr. Seuss Party. This also was devoured.

My daughter requested a chocolate cake. I doubled this recipe. I purchased these molds from Amazon to create the fish, turtle, and seaweed out of white Ghiradelli wafers. I already had the shell molds from her previous mermaid birthday.

I used this recipe to make the marshmallow fondant and some blue icing gel just not mixed in all the way to create the look of the ocean.

I made these cupcake toppers to coordinate with the rest of her party. I adhered them to toothpicks with some scotch tape and inserted them into these delicious vanilla cupcakes. The toppers are available here.

I used this recipe to make star fish and seahorse sugar cookies. I baked them and left the decorating to the kids as another party activity. The kids always really enjoy this.

For a large group, I find using muffin tins with toppings to scoop out works well. The delicious buttercream frosting is from Two Sisters. The gorgeous plate above was hand made by Pacific Northwest glass artist Terri Shinners.

Favors:

The bags for her birthday party contained a bag of goldfish crackers, some tattoos, stickers, and these squishies I found on Amazon. They were given to the guests to fill with pinata candy as well as any crafts they wanted to take home. Each guest also got to make their own sea pet to take home. The treat bag labels are available here.

I purchased these mini sea creatures from Terra by Battat and included trays filled with blue rice, glass gems, more shells, rocks, and some oats. The kids were given these jars leftover from brother’s TMNT birthday party and filled them, making a home for their pet fish or crab.

I laid out extra fish next to our bin of magnetic tiles and some kids spent time here building aquariums for the fish.

My greatest joy in creating these parties for my children is seeing all their excitement and happiness. At nine years old, my daughter had a very clear vision as to what she wanted. She no longer wanted her pictures on her invitations or a story time during her party. She really did love many ideas from her past Mermaid birthday (which was a drive by birthday due to COVID) and was so happy to get to recreate them and enjoy in person now with family and friends.

This year I wanted to purchase something special and meaningful for my daughter while also helping to support some other mom owned Etsy shops. I found some sweet gifts for my birthday girl at Famke at Work and Nuggtato Studio that she really enjoyed.

Your child may also enjoy:

Pool Noodle Sea Anemone, Fish, and Octopus

Multiplication Sharks, Fish, and Turtles

Mermaid Word Families

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

To see my other kids’ parties click here.

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 can help you to create something easy, fun, and memorable for your kids too!