Birthdays are special…especially for children. If you have a little girl, what better way to celebrate than to give her a happy birthday doll?

A happy birthday doll is typically dressed up as if she is ready to celebrate a birthday. She may be wearing clothing like a party dress and a tiara. She may even come with props that will help your child have a terrific day. 

Birthday dolls are perfect for playtime on your daughter’s special day and they will be a reminder of the fun times she had on her birthday for years to come. 

If you have just given your daughter a happy birthday doll, you will want her to get as much out of it as possible.  With that in mind, here are five fun activities that will make her playtime enjoyable.

1. Tea Party

A tea party is a great form of imaginative play for your child. Imaginative play is a type of loosely structured play that generally includes role-play, imagined scenarios and object substitutions. It is a great way to stimulate your child’s creative thinking and decision making and social skills.

The tea party you encourage your child to create can celebrate your happy birthday doll’s birthday. She can bring in other dolls to join in on the party. They can play games, give each other gifts (that can be little trinkets you have in your home or imagined), eat ‘birthday cake’ and talk about birthday plans.

2. Princess Games

If your doll is already wearing a fancy dress and a tiara, she can easily double as a princess in any sort of imaginative play. 

In typical princess stories, the princess is captured by some sort of evil being. She must be brave and do what she can in order to survive, but ultimately she is rescued by her prince.

Your daughter can have fun recreating these stories, but for a modern spin, encourage her to have her story end with the princess rescuing herself. Or better yet, maybe in her story, it can the prince that is in trouble and it will be up to the princess to rescue him.

3. Create a Party

A lot of thought and creativity goes into party planning and, as a parent, no one knows this better than you. You must think of what food to serve, what activities the children can do while the party is happening and organize the schedule so that everything will go as planned.

Now that your daughter has a happy birthday doll, maybe she can come up with the perfect party for her little lady. She can plan a menu and activities and then she can get her dolls together to act out these activities in a real party setting. 

To make the event even more fun, encourage her to make her own decorations. As an added challenge, see if she can run the entire party so that it starts and ends at a certain time!

4. Travel Adventure

Maybe your happy birthday doll is being taken on vacation as a special birthday surprise. Where will she go? What will she do?

Encourage your daughter to come up with a place she would like to travel to. Then the both of you can do a little research to find out more about that place’s culture and what there is to see and do. 

Now have your child put her doll in the middle of it. She can make her doll experience new foods and see terrific places. She can go on adventures that are specific to the place she is ‘visiting’. She can even bring along one or more doll friends so that she has someone to share her experiences with.

5. Other Types of Role Play

Just because your daughter’s birthday doll comes with a fancy dress, that doesn’t mean she always has to be going to a party. Your daughter can use her doll in any type of roleplaying scenario. In fact, if the doll comes with casual outfit alternatives or if she fits into the clothing some of her other dolls wear, your daughter can even change her outfit so she has a look that is perfect for any occasion!

Once the doll is taken out her ‘happy birthday’ context, she can be a part of just about any scenario. She can be a teacher, a mother, a doctor, a lawyer…and the list goes on. 

Encourage your child to think of the type of scenario she would like to create. She can use her birthday doll to make it happen.

When you give your daughter a birthday doll, you are giving her more than a toy that will commemorate her birthday, you are opening her mind to a whole new world. Which of these activities will you be doing to help your daughter get the most of her doll?