Block off the construction zone, put on your hard hat, get the dump truck and wrecking ball, and build the perfect birthday party with our Construction Party Ideas! Read on for general party planning tips as well as great construction truck decorating ideas, food, game, and activity suggestions.

• A bulldozer is used to push dirt and other debris around a construction site. It is strong enough to push a small elephant.
• A front end loader is used to haul sand, dirt, and rock around a construction site. It weighs over 27,000 pounds and can hold up to three bathtubs full of sand in its bucket.
• A cement truck mixes cement powder, stone, and water to make concrete. The drum can hold up to 12 cubic yards of concrete or about 7,000 glasses of soda.
• A Dump truck is used to haul heavy loads to, from and around a construction site. It is usually about 25 to 30 feet long and can hold 18 tons of material. This means that a dump truck could carry more than 6 million Lifesaver candies!

• Fold a piece of construction paper in half, and cut out a dump truck shape. Write "Caution! [Child’s name] is turning [child’s age]!" Cut black construction-paper circles for the wheels, and attached them to the card with brass fasteners so they spin. Then, add all of the party details inside. Place each invitation in a card envelope or a small manila envelope, and seal the envelopes with truck stickers.
• Be creative with the party details by writing a theme-appropriate message inside each invitation. Use the example below, or write your own message.

  Come Join Our Crew for a Construction Birthday Party!
  Clock in at [time party begins] on [party date], and Clock out at [time party ends].
  Job Site Location:
  [Party Address]
  Call the Big Boss at [phone number] if You're Coming!

  
  
• If desired, you can offer your guests a clue about the party activities they can expect using wording like "Come ready to move dirt and swing a hammer! There's construction work to be done!"
• If party activities may get dirty, ask your guests to come dressed in their work clothes.

• Toy Trucks - Use plenty of toy trucks and cars to decorate the party area. If you have access to larger toy trucks, consider using them to store and transport the gifts to the birthday child at gift-opening time.
• Construction Site Signs - Make a few construction site signs to hang on the walls. Choose sayings like "Birthday Party This Way", "Construction Zone Ahead" and "Little Men at Work”. Tape the signs to sticks, and then place them along the driveway and sidewalk leading to your front door.
• Outdoor Decorations - Draw a road on your driveway using chalk, and let the children add more trucks and trees to the road until all the guests have arrived.
• Construction Zone - Purchase yellow and black "Birthday Zone" or “Caution” tape, and hang long strips of it across the top of your front door to create a curtain. Drape additional strips of warning tape from the light fixture above the main table and throughout the rest of the party space.
• Special Signs & Road Cones - Call your local public works department to ask if they will loan you street barriers, a "Road Closed" sign, a "Detour" sign, or orange traffic cones to help set the mood. You can also purchase toy traffic cones to use as table decorations. If you are able to borrow or buy traffic cones, tie a balloon to each one, and use them to outline the party area in your yard.
• Construction Centerpiece - Your child's toy trucks will make great table decorations! Arrange a group of trucks in the middle of the table as your centerpiece.
• Balloons - Balloons are always a hit with children! Tie helium balloons in groups of five to toy trucks or balloon weights, and place them around the party space. For impact, use a mixture of truck-shaped balloons and colorful latex balloons. Remember to tie some to the chair where the birthday child will sit, too!
• 3-D Cardboard Truck - Create a truck from an empty appliance box. Use an X-Acto knife to cut out a few windows, and paint the box yellow to resemble a construction truck. Cut out four circles from a sheet of cardboard, spray paint them black, and glue them onto the sides of the box to create wheels. If desired, you can turn this into a party activity by handing out washable markers and letting your guests decorate the box during the party. Either way, this will be a great place to take pictures during the party!
• Displaying Goody Bags - Use a small wheelbarrow, a large toy truck or a red wagon to hold the goody bags.
• Construction Truck Pinata - Hang a truck pinata as a decoration, if your guests are too young to hit one.
• Roadway Activity Mat - Place a plain, white paper tablecloth on the floor of the play area or across a table. Use black marker to draw roads going in different directions across the tablecloth. Add stop signs, yield signs, traffic lights, etc., using brightly-colored markers. Set a number of small toy cars and trucks on the road and let your guests play on the road during the party.

• Construction-Themed Serving Dishes - Serve food and snacks in the back of clean toy dump trucks. Purchase empty paint cans at a hardware store, and use them to serve chips. Use a new, clean paint tray to serve cut-up veggies and dip. Use clean plastic shovels as serving utensils.
• Traffic Light Snacks - Frost graham crackers or other rectangular-shaped cookies with yellow icing. Add one red, green, and yellow M&M or gumdrop down the center to make traffic light snacks.
• Edible Building Blocks - Cut fruit and cheese into cubes, and label the tray "Bricks". For younger children, use the food to build a tower from which they can eat. Let older children make their own edible buildings with the cubed food.
• Tire Salad - Use pasta wheels to make a construction-themed pasta salad.
• Bagged Lunches - Serve your little workers their own lunches or snacks in brown paper bags. Label the outside of each bag with a guest’s name, and then fill it with a sandwich, fruit, cheese crackers, and a juice box. If you have a wagon, add a sign saying "Snack Wagon" to it, and load the bagged snacks inside.
• Build-Your-Own Sandwich Bar - As an alternative to bagged lunches, you can let the children "build" their own sandwiches at the party using ingredients with unique construction material names. For example, put slices of bread, peanut butter, jelly, sliced bananas, peanuts, etc. in separate containers. Mark the bread as "Foundation & Roofing," the peanut butter as "Dirt," the jelly as "Cement," the bananas as "Support Beams," and the peanuts as "Nuts & Bolts." Use any ingredients you want. Get creative!
• Dump Truck Treats - Offer brownies or cake in a clever container. Cut the brownies/cake into small squares, and then stack them in the back of a clean toy dump truck. Next, scatter crushed chocolate cookies around the bottom as “dirt”, and add some gummy worms for more fun! Also, be sure to serve these with a plastic shovel!
• Construction Site Cake - Here's a quick idea to create a birthday cake that looks like a construction site. Bake a 9" x 13" cake, and frost it with green icing (i.e. green food coloring mixed into white frosting). Use a tube of black gel frosting or chocolate sprinkles to draw a road around the cake. Then, add a pile of crushed graham crackers as "dirt" in the middle of the cake, and place small toy trucks on the "dirt pile". For more decorations, add brown candy such as malt balls, junior mints, or peanut M&Ms to be the rocks! You may also want to add miniature road signs from your local hobby shop.
• Dump Truck Birthday Cake - Make a simple Dump Truck Birthday Cake using two store-bought pound cakes. Carve a small piece from the top of the second cake to resemble the dumper. Then, place the cakes back-to-back on a platter and frost with yellow icing. Next, fill the "dumper" section you carved earlier with crushed cookies for "dirt", and attach small donuts for wheels.
• Ice Cream Shovels - Consider purchasing small shovels to use as spoons for eating ice cream. You can purchase them from the doll section of most craft stores for a reasonable price.
• Edible Construction Centerpiece - A construction hat filled with candy will make a colorful and fun centerpiece. Give each child some of the candy to take home at the end of the party.