You "rock" for coming to our party!

Children's Rocks and Minerals Party

For my son's fifth birthday, we decided on a "Geology" theme.  Like many children his age, he absolutely loves to dig in my garden for little treasures, like twigs or unique pebbles.  On a lark, we purchased a handful of gemstones from a local shop.  We would hide them in a pile of kinetic sand for an impromptu gemstone dig.  When it came time to put together favors for his birthday, it seemed natural to echo his beloved past time.  Here are a few ideas for party favor bags for this theme. 

We used adorable printables from 3 Little Monkeys Studio on Etsy.com.  This studio has a personalized banner, invitations and party tags in a rocks and minerals theme.   Just print on card stock at home or a local UPS store, and voila! These designs are under ten dollars each. 

My little man is at an age where he can spend hours outside just collecting unique rocks, leaves and sticks.  Since this was clearly emerging as his favorite past time, I thought that maybe his friends were having a similar love affair with playing in the dirt.  Even as a grown up, I like to keep a few polished stones with me all of the time, a habit I started years ago when recovering from a car accident.  Whenever I would start to feel achy or anxious, I would use the stones to distract myself.  They were especially helpful during periods of time where I had multiple blood draws.  Holding a cool, smooth gemstone in my hand had a soothing effect.  If you would like to provide stones to children, just be sure that they are age appropriate and shop the collection at TreasureCreek LLC on Etsy.

We added a few rocks and minerals themed snacks to our favor bags, like Pop-rocks and brownies layered with graham cracker crumbs and chocolate stones to imitate the Earth's crust.  These stones were incredible.  They look exactly like real pebbles but taste like good quality chocolate.   We ordered a bag of these from Sweet Kicks Candies on Etsy, a cute little store with more than one hundred and eight different candy products. 

You could easily create an on-site mini-dig for your little guests by simply getting a few big buckets and filling them with sand and gemstones.  Hand each of the children a plastic shovel (or the more eco-friendly wooden spoon) and let them dig for buried treasures.  To bring some of the fun home, there are many commercial rock mining kits available.  Here is one of my favorites: