How awesome is the movie Moana?! I loved it – the story, the animation and especially the music! As soon as I saw it, I was already planning my next theme week!
We may have gone a little crazy decorating, but as I like to say when it comes to theme decor: more is more! I can’t tell you how badly I get teased for this mantra, lol! But, since our theme weeks only happen a couple times per session, we need to go big! I want parents and kids to see our theme before them even step foot in the actual gym so they can build some anticipation for an extra special day while they wait! It’s also good PR for parents to see that we give 100% to our program.
To start things off – all kids recieved a “lei” upon arrival. The plastic cheapy ones from the dollar store worked perfectly. The kids wore the leis during warm up and an initial activity, then took them off so that no one would get caught up in a bar or something like that.
Here are some of the highlights:
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- Welcome sign
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- Lobby decor!
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- Gotta have a palm tree!
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- Little Hawaiian decorations on the beam!
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- Decorations on the pre-school bars
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- Decor on the rings, and you can see the waves in the background along the tumbletrack.
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- Flowers and greenery – cant go wrong!
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- I love these pineapples!
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- At the end we would make “sea bubbles”! Coaches would make the bubbles and the kids would pop them!
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- Crab crawl over the sea creatures!
Our theme activities used the Island Palm Tree set up you can see here:
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- Treasure collecting – bring the coins back to the island without touching the seaweed!
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- Hop from “island” to “island” and pick up the coins – bring them back to Hawaii!
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- Got these coins for $2!
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- The blow up palm tree was $4, but SO worth it! Wish I got a couple more to place around the gym.
Overall, it was a fun theme and pretty versatile. Some of my staff hadn’t seen Moana yet, so they could easily call it Hawaiian week instead. We played the Moana soundtrack on repeat all week and I’ll forever have those songs stuck in my head (good thing I like ’em!).
If you are interested, you can download my PDF Moana Theme Week Guide from my Patchwork Marketplace page – a really cool site I recommend you check out (and sign up for!). The concept of Patchwork Marketplace is that you can upload any recreation-related resource you’ve made and sell it at a low coast to other rec profressionals. It’s a cool place to find neat resources and also a way to make a little $$ on the side!
