• Listening Invitation: Buy inexpensive audiotapes, one for each guest. Sing your invitation, accompanied by some appropriate music, and record it on tape. Then copy the tape for each guest.



• Music Note: Cut out large music notes from black construction paper and write party details with white ink.

• Score Sheets: Buy blank music score sheets and write party details up and down the lines to look like lines of music.

• Cut out giant black music notes from construction paper and tape them to the walls at a child's eye level.



• Hang a few music notes from the ceiling to dance above guests' heads.



• Hang up posters of child singing stars.



• Create a table centrepiece out of toy musical instruments.



• Cover the table with white paper and draw lines on it to look like sheet music.



• Make place mats out of music notes and write guests' names in the centres.



• Play children's music in the background.

• Dress guests in T-shirts decorated with music notes.



• Have guests wear elastic bracelets and/or anklets with bells securely attachd

• What's That Sound?: Tape-record a variety of familiar sounds from around the home or neighbourhood. You might include the sound of a dog barking, an alarm clock, a flushing toilet, a car horn, a vacuum, a doorbell, a telephone ringing, a noisy toy, and so on. Play the tape, one sound at a time, and let the kids guess each sound.



• Name that Tot Tune: Prerecord five to ten seconds of familiar children's songs on tape. Have guests gather in a circle. Play the first song segment, then stop the tape and let guests guess the song.

• Musical Chairs: Play the classic game of Musical Chairs with a twist. Set up chairs-enough for all but one guest- in a circle or row. March the kids around the chairs while you play music. When the music stops, guests must rush to find a chair. The player without a chair is out of the game-but she wins a prize anyway!



• Make Up a Song: Seat everyone in a circle. Play a simple instrument such as a guitar or a ukulele, and go around the circle making up lines to a song, beginning with the guest to your right. To get the composers started, make up the first line yourself.

• Musical Parade: Give each guest a homemade or inexpensive toy musical instrument and stage a musical parade around the house or the neighbourhood.



• Homemade Concert: Create your own musical instruments together (use books from a library or bookstore for ideas). You can make drums from oatmeal boxes, kazoos from toilet paper rolls covered at one end with wax paper, shakers from small plastic containers filled with seeds or sand, tambourines from stiff paper plates glued together with bells inside or tongue depressors with jingle bells hot-glued on the ends, and simple noisemakers from smooth wooden blocks. Then put in earplugs and put on a concert!

• Sing-Along: Play guests' favourite music and have them sing along.

• Create Piano Sandwiches using white and brown bread with crusts removed. Fill the sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly, cut into thin rectangles, and line up alternating brown and white rectangles to resemble piano keys.



• Serve Musical Milk: Pour milk into clear plastic glasses, filling only halfway. Give straws to the guests and let them blow bubbles into the milk while humming tunes, as though they are "playing" the milk! Or fill the glasses with varying amounts of milk and let guests tap the sides of the glasses to make music.



• Serve "noisy" foods, such as crunchy celery and carrot sticks, crackers and crisps, popcorn, and so on.



• Make cookies shaped like musical notes using a cookie cutter, if available, or shape the cookies freehand using a sharp knife. Decorate cookies with frosting. Serve lined up on the sheet-music tablecloth. (See Decorations.)

Drum Cake

1. Bake a double-layer round cake following a favourite recipe. Cool.
2. Frost the top of one layer and set the other layer on top; frost sides of the cake, leaving an inch from the top unfrosted all around.
3. Frost the top of the cake and the unfrosted inch on the sides with a different colour.
4. Use frosting tubes to make a zigzag design on the side of the cake.
5. Set two bread sticks crisscrossed on the top of the cake to make drumsticks.

• Give sing-along tapes of favourite tunes.

• Have a children's dance party. Just turn on the music and let guests dance up a storm. Teach them a few simple steps when they get tired of making up their own.



• Play children's videos with music.

• This is a noisy party, so provide your grown-up guests with earplugs! Warn your neighbours so they know what's going on.