By: Courtney Byrne

Who’s ready for a luau?! I love using a luau theme for summer parties. Whether it’s an end of the school year bash or neighborhood bbq, it’s a fun theme. Today I’m sharing easy luau ideas for kids. There are luau crafts, snack ideas, games, decor and more. Enjoy and mahalo for reading!

Easy Luau Ideas for Kids

3 Luau Handprint Crafts for Kids

1. Pineapple Handprint

Supplies: yellow paper, white paper, green paint, brown crayon, glue & scissors

Directions: Cut an oval out of the yellow paper, make a green handprint on the white paper and cut it out. Glue it to the top of the yellow oval. Last, draw the brown lines on the pineapple.

2. Hula Handprint (click here for directions)

3. Flamingo Handprint (click here for directions)

Easy Luau Activities for Kids

1. Paint Shells: You can collect shells if you are at the beach but we were not to to make things easy, I ordered this box of shells from Oriental Trading and they were perfect for painting

2. Do the limbo!

3. Water Balloon Hot Potato: Water balloons plus this fun gadget I found on Amazon makes for a fun game!

4. Hawaiian Flower Photo Opp: This was so easy and made for some really cute photos. We used an old picture frame (11X14) and spray painted it blue. Then I got a bag of Hawaiian flowers from Oriental Trading and glued them all around.

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Luau Snacks for Kids

1. Beach Bucket Popcorn: SO easy and looks adorable for any summer party. The mini buckets and shovels are from Oriental Trading.

2. Fun Fruit Skewers: This was easy – just cut up fruit and I added the pieces onto these cute pineapple stem toothpicks. They looked festive and were the perfect size for a few pieces of fruit

3. Beach Sand Pudding Cups: vanilla pudding, topped with smashed graham crackers (sand!). Then I added Hawaiian umbrellas from Oriental Trading.

4. DIY Pineapple Snack Cups: This was a fun little DIY. I got these solid yellow cups and drew the pineapple design with a Sharpie. Then I cut leaves out of green paper. It took just a few minutes and made great snack cups for the luau.

Luau Party Supplies

All of the party supplies below are from Oriental Trading. They have the cutest luau items and at a great price. I’ve gone to doing table cloth rolls for parties because You can use for different size tables and easily save what you don’t use. The pack of flamingo and parrot glasses from Oriental Trading are awesome and something cute for kids to take home! For the Hawaiian leis, one fun idea is to get them in your kids school colors if it’s a school end of the year party. Two years in a row I got solid yellow and solid blue leis (our school colors) and it looked like a luau meets school spirit! Oriental Trading has a lot of different solid colored leis.

1. Hawaiian Leis

2. Cups, plates, napkins

3. Tropical Leaf Table covers (all of the table clothes in the photos)

4. Pineapple drink holders

5. Hawaiian party favors

Luau Decor

1. Pineapple Center Piece: Just put sunglasses on a real pineapple… what’s easier than that 🙂

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2. Flamingo lawn decorations

3. Pineapple Plant Balloon Wall: I ordered large and small leaves from Oriental Trading and then added yellow balloons. You can stack the leaves/balloons for an even cooler look!

An update! Looking for ideas to host a virtual luau?

Just because we can’t gather in groups, doesn’t mean we can have fun themed parties! Last week we hosted a virtual luau for Alex’s class “end of the year” party and it was a lot of fun.

How we prepped: I put together a bag of luau supplies for each kid in a large ziplock and left on my front porch for the parents to pick up.

What was in the bag:

I got all of these supplies from Oriental Trading. They came in one big box and I could easily “safely” make their zip lock of supplies while wearing gloves.

Sunglasses and a Hawaiian lei to wear during the virtual party. It was so cute to see them all matching on the call!
Color your own luau bookmarks
Bingo boards. I picked these because they came with a mini dry erase marker to mark off squares
Surfboard keychains (to be their Bingo prize)
Luau cup – so they could all have the same cup to enjoy some water/juice during the party

The party: We hosted the party on Zoom. Kids brought their own snacks and drinks. We played Bingo and when kids won, they could hold up the prize that we had put in the bag (so many cute luau prizes on Oriental Trading!). We also played charades. I sent out a list of ideas ahead of the party. We used the chat feature to let kids guess which was a lot of fun! Kids can also work on their craft (see above) during the Zoom and chat about summer.