Age group(s) for this birthday party activity:
Preschool and Younger
Elementary School

Cost of birthday party activity:
Usual cost of food, cake, balloons and steamers.
Cost of art supplies for clown hats.
Cost of face paints.

Birthday party planning information:
It's circus time!
Invitations: Use construction paper to cut out a circus tent shaped invitation. Color red and white stripes on the top.
Decorations: Create your own big top. Use red and white balloons, and hang red and white streamers around the room.
Food: Prepare circus-style food such as corn dogs, popcorn, cotton candy and caramel apples.
Cake: Frost cupcakes in pastel colors. Decorate the cupcakes to look like clown faces using red candies or bits of maraschino cherries for cheeks, a piece of banana for the ouht, and orange tinted coconut for the hair. Add a pointed ice cream cone as a hat and decorate the plate with assorted round candies to look like polka dots.

Other suggestions or comments:
Activities: Before the guests arrive, gather supplies like pompoms, stickers, paints, markers, glue sticks, and face paints, along with clown noses and red yard for hair. Buy plain cone-shaped hats or make them out of sturdy posterboard.
Cover a table with plenty of newspaper. As the guests arrive, have them sit at the table. Give them each a hat and glue stick, and let them decorate as long as they like.
When the hats are done, give each child a clown nose and paint his or her face. Lead the group in a clown show - ask them to balance an apple on their nose, carry a bunchof balloons, or walk a tightrope (a line on the floor will do).