Animal Shelter Party Ideas       

Birthday party ideas for an Animal Shelter party.  If your child loves to help animals this is a wonderful charity party that will be fun for all the kids and also help out your local Animal Shelter.  Get the whole neighborhood involved with our Free Animal Shelter Helper Scavenger Hunt item list - see below.

Animal Shelter Party Activities
Animal Shelter Tour - Call ahead to your local Animal Shelter and see if they will give tours of their facility to your party guests.  They may even let the children walk a few dogs or pet some puppies!  This would be a great time to drop off your donated items. 

Animal Adoption  - Buy several stuffed puppies and kittens (at least enough for everyone at the party and if possible a few extra) and set them up for adoption.  Make shelter cages from empty boxes stacked on top of each other and taped together.  Cut a door in the side of the box with "bars" cut out so the puppy or kitty can be seen through the bars.  On the outside place a tag that states what type of animal it is, male or female and it's coloring.  Let the children adopt the stuffed animals and name them.  This is a fun party favor too!  Give out adoption certificates with the child's name, date and name of the animal they adopted. 

Face Painting - Hire a face painter to come and paint whiskers and animal faces on the children.  Whiskers are easy ... you can probably do it yourself! 

Animal Shelter Party Games
Animal Shelter Scavenger Hunt - Fun for all the kids and they are able to help the local animal shelter too!   We've created a list of over 20 items the kids can look for and then donate to their local animal shelter.  You can divide into teams or since it is for charity send the children out together.  Animal Shelter Scavenger Hunt List   Take party guests to the animal shelter to drop off the items. Or take a photo of your child dropping off the items and send it out with the thank-you notes.  

Puppy Dig
Fill a small wading pool with sand and hide small prizes deep at the bottom of the sand.  Give the guests 15 seconds to dig for a prize (they will have to dig fast and the game will last longer).  Once they are done the next child in line must dig for a prize. 
This can easily be expanded into a two team relay race by either setting up two pools or separating one pool in half (each team gets one half of the pool) by a string or divider.  Place the same amount of prizes in each half of the pool and have teams race one by one to find a prize. The team who finds all the prizes first wins the prizes they found and also a grand prize.  (The grand prize can be something fun like being served cake and ice cream first, or being first to begin the next game.)

Dog Bone Treasure Hunt - Hide either real Milk Bone dog biscuits or for smaller children bones cut out of heavy cardboard around the party area.  You can give a prize to whoever finds the most or number the bones and they receive a prize based on the number they find.   If you plan on doing the Animal Adoption activity you can assign each animal a number and then write the corresponding number on the bones.  Once a child finds a bone with a number they can keep it or trade it for another one, but they can't have more then one in their hand at a time.  Hide bones without number also so it will be challenging.

Party Favors
Dog tags
Balls
Jewelry with animals on it
The stuffed animal from the Animal Adoption activity above
Beanie Babies
Glasses with animal faces 

Animal Shelter Goody Bags
Dog dish
Small wicker basket to hold their adopted "pet"