Wheels on the bus – 1st Birthday theme

Center stage for cake cutting.

Hello all! Since the recent birthday theme of continents was so popular, I am back with another birthday theme! I designed a “Wheels on the bus” theme for my second son, Amay’s first birthday in 2019. 🚌🚏

At age 1, he was fond of Wheels on the bus song. We have seen so many versions of them on youtube!!! So, I had to search a lot on Pinterest and google for ideas! What you find mostly is the school bus theme online. So, I made it work for my theme of colorful bus around the town.

Bus table for cake cutting

Again, a whole lot of paper cutting DIY to do. The birthday banner was to look like a road with HAPPY BIRTHDAY letters. I chose a blue sheet for sky, pasted strip of black sheet with white bits for representing road. Drew the letters on each sheet and then put them thru a string. At the beginning and end of this banner I added a bus cutout made from thin craft foam sheets, drew windows and doors in it to look like a bus. I cut out his name using Styrofoam that I had at home.

Theme words

I mostly make stuff with whatever I have at hand and buy craft things as I need.😁

So, next was the theme specific words like BEEP BEEP, DING DING. I cut out these 
letters using poster sheets. Basically, I chose the smallest words from the song. I used regular white stitching thread to make the streamer. Because it’s a road theme, there’s a lot of sign boards that can be made. Along with the words, I made signal light streamers with octagon shaped STOP fillers. I used regular construction paper for this.

All signs ready to go

I used pizza boxes to make the sign boards. The words were party specific like DUMP GIFTS HERE, PARTY ZONE for lunchroom, STOP and AMAY IS ONE. Sprayed the yellow and used markers to write. Painted the STOP board and AMAY boards.

Next was the cutest task of making bus cut outs. I used entire poster sheets. Drew a light outline of a bus such that there was minimal cutting and wastage of paper. I used black and white sheets for making the window shields, eyes, bumper, smile, and tires; drew whatever was needed on them with sketch pens and crayons.

Photo frame prop

For the cake cutting table, I decorated it to look like a bus. Used a blue table cover, pasted white paper using black masking tape to make door and windows and used 2 round boards to make wheels. 

The last thing to make was a photo frame prop. I used a foam poster sheet. Cut out two large window shields for people to pose through. Painted it with yellow color and added the other details like lights, tires, and mirrors; I used aluminum sheets to make it look like mirrors.

 

Bus stapled to spirals

To add more buses to the room, I cut out small sized foam sheet buses and stapled them to the decorative party spirals and hung them from the ceiling, windows etc.

The cake was bus theme too. I just placed a toy bus on it to complete the theme. I also kept a tray of chocolate donuts with a label of ‘Extra Tires’!😄😄

The entrance door of our house had the signs – STOP the BUS AMAY is ONE!

The photo frame and the donuts were a hit. And because most of the kids visiting were my older son’s friends, I had rented a jumping house for their entertainment in our backyard.

I hope you enjoy this theme and the work done and find these ideas useful. Thank you for reading.😊