Star Wars Sleep Over Party- Games & Activities

Details

This party was for a 9 year old boy.

It was held in the winter.
We had a total of 8 boys spend the night.

Games & Activities

As the children arrived at 6:00 pm, each found their seat around the table.  Each spot had a Jedi robe & belt for them to put on.

It was dinner time, and all of the boys were hungry.
After dinner, we cleared the table and got our craft activities going...


First was making light sabers.
Supplies:
-pool noodles- they picked a red or blue
-duct tape- we had a variety of different patterned tape, and allowed the kids to get creative creating buttons, etc.

I recommend planning ahead- we had a lot of trouble finding pool noodles in February, so ended up with shorter light sabers than I would have preferred (at least the boys didn't seem to mind!)

After making the light sabers, we went into the family room for a game we called "Use the Force".
I had blown up white balloons (some with helium, so without) and drew stormtrooper faces on them...

I had taped a blue line across the floor and split the boys into two teams.  Using their light sabers, they had to bat the balloons over to the opponents side of the room, all while the opposite team batted them back.  There was a 1 minute time limit, and whichever team had the least balloons on their side won that round.  We played several rounds of this- it got quite wild!

To calm things down a bit, we moved onto the next craft activity- making pillow cases.

During the game, we cleaned up the dining room table from the light saber making activity, and set up for the pillowcase making...

Supplies:
-new white pillowcase for each child
-a couple sets of fabric markers
-stencils (I found these online and printed them onto card stock, and cut out the necessary design.  This is definitely something to do ahead of time!  I'd also recommend doing a few of each pattern, so the kids don't have to wait too long for)
A few sites I found free stencils on:
here, here, here and here

I was really pleased with how enthusiastic the boys were about this activity.  They really got creative with it and had a lot of fun.  Here are some samples of their work:

Next up was cake and singing to the birthday boy.

Then they changed into pajamas and got the sleeping bags ready in the media room.

We let them pick which of the Star Wars movies they wanted to watch and although it took a while, they finally settled down and fell asleep during the third one!

The next morning, they were up bright & early.  We had breakfast and the birthday boy opened his gifts.  Then they each got changed and just hung out & played until the parents arrived at 9:00.

Add your Star Wars game & activity ideas in the comments below!

Related Posts:

Star Wars Sleep Over: Invitations & Decorations
Star Wars Sleep Over: Food & Goodies (coming soon!)

Scooby Doo Party- Games & Activities

Details

This party was for a five year old boy.  It was held outside.

Games & Activities

As the children arrived, they jumped in the Bounce House until everyone was there.

We then ate lunch and as they finished, the children got to pick out stick on tattoos.

Once that gang was fed & had their tattoos, they were told that the phantom had stolen all of Scooby's dog bones!  Could they help find them?  We had hidden about 60 milk bones around the back yard for them to hunt. The four & five year olds LOVED this.

Next we told the kids that ghosts had stolen Scooby's treasure as we lead them to the "Ghost Garden".  Here we had white balloons that I had inserted quarters into before inflating.  Then I drew faces on each balloon with a black sharpie.  The children had to pick a ghost and pop it to get the treasure back.  They got to keep the quarters.

By now, the table was cleared of the lunch food, and we returned to pick out stuffed puppies from "Scooby's Adoption Center".  The kids each picked out their puppy and then made a beaded collar for them.  They were also able to make a matching bracelet for themselves.


The stuffed dogs, beads & elastic string were all purchased from Oriental Trading.  We kept with the blue/green/orange/purple color theme.

This activity was great for reinforcing the patterns that they had been learning about in school recently.





We sang happy birthday and had cupcakes.

 Then it was time for the pinata.

I made the conscious decision to get a pull-string pinata, since I couldn't see beating up a Scooby pinata with a stick!

We've tried pull string pinatas in the past where each child took a turn pulling one string... and it never worked (we always ended up just ripping it & dumping the candy out from above their heads).

This time we had all of the kids select a string and pull at the same time.

This worked so much better!  The pinata opened, and all of the children were centrally located under it, so everyone got to scoop up goodies.






I made little orange & blue "Doggie Bags" for them to hold their treats in.











The party wrapped up with children returning to the bounce house for a bit.

Additional ideas

-"Mummy Wrap"- Split kids into teams and have them pick one person to be the Mummy.  Give them a roll or two of toilet paper and have them race to make a mummy out of the selected team member.  This could roll right into a game of "Mummy Tag" where the mummies are "it".

-There are lots of ideas online for making a scavenger hunt, putting rhyming clues at each game/activity.

-We did a Doggie Bone Hunt, but you could also do a "Doggy Bone Toss", where the bones had to be thrown into a doggy bowl placed a few feet away.  Or, if really ambitious, you could make a carnival-style sign of Scooby with a hole for his mouth that the kids could throw the bones through!

-"Scooby, Scooby, Phantom"- Played just like Duck, Duck, Goose!

-Pin the tag on Scooby

-"Velma's Glasses"- One child is selected to be "Velma" and closes their eyes & counts to ten.  Meanwhile the other children are given a pair of glasses to pass behind their backs.  Velma then has to guess who has them.

Add your ideas in the comments below!

Related Posts:

Scooby Doo Invitations & Decorations
Scooby Doo Food & Goodies

St Patrick's Day Brunch

FOOD

This year, we had a brunch for St. Patty's Day.  We set up the food as a buffet (putting them in crock pots to keep warm).

Menu included:
Scrambled Eggs
Sausage
Oatmeal with fixings (brown sugar, cinnamon, dried cranberries, raisins, maple syrup)

Potato Cheese Soup (toppers of scallions & extra shredded cheese)

Corned Beef & Cabbage Paninis

Crab Deviled Eggs

Irish Soda Bread

Pastries
Brownies
Oh Ryan's Irish Potatoes

Drinks
Leprechaun Lemonade (yellow lemonade dyed green)

OJ
Coffee with Irish Creamer
Irish Breakfast Tea

Mimosas

Wine with green labels

Harp & Guinness beer

Baileys

Water bottles (with St. Patty's labels)

Soda


Games & Activities
We set up a kids table with some crayons and activities for them to do.
Roll-A-Leprechaun 

Coloring pages
Word find
Jokes
Trivia & MadLib from Snapfish

Decorations

Free Printables from How Does She 
Free Printables from Simply Create Designs on Catch My Party

Free Printable from Landee See Landee Do

Using picture frame coasters,
I inserted color printouts into the frame.
Used as spoon rests for the crock pots & coffee pot.
See photo below!

Dressed up an old wreath

For the labels on the lids of the crock pots, I used a cookie cutter to mark a shamrock shape on foam sheets.  After cutting it out, I used a sharpie to write, and wrote upside down on the other side (so that when the lids were hung up on the stand behind each pot, you could still see through the glass and read the sign).  To adhere them, I used an Elmers Glue Stick.  They stuck nicely, and the residue cleaned off easily with just some soap & water at the end of the day.

Kid-made Irish Heart craft/decoration:
-Paint a sheet of paper with green paint ranging from light to dark green.
-Let dry, then cut green paper into small squares.
-Cut out template into desired shape (heart, clover, etc.)
-Paste squares onto template in pattern from light to dark (or stripes, etc)





Recipes for:
-Potato Cheese Soup
-Corned Beef & Cabbage Paninis

Curious George Party- Games & Activities

The great part about this theme is that with such a large selection of books, you can make almost any activity tie in!  

We made photo copies of Curious George book covers to go along with the activites we had planned.  

After taping the image to a pinwheel, we stuck them in cleaned (labels removed) Starbuck's Frappaccino bottles to stand up.  

We glued an image of George to the front of the bottle, and stuffed it with blue tissue paper.

Some of the stations were organized activities, others were free play.

Here are the stations we had, along with the signs used (click on the link to see the image)

-Musical Instruments
sign: CG at the Parade or CG Parade Day
Have a basket of musical instruments- enough for each child to get one (tambourines, bells, drums, kazoos, etc.)  March around the yard with the birthday child leading the parade.

-Feeding/petting goats
sign: CG Feeds the Animals
Petting zoo with any animals you may own, or even stuffed animals.  We had goats for the children to pet & feed.

Feeding Goats

-Kite building
sign: CG Flies a Kite
Purchase blank kites and have children use sharpies to make their own design & color them.
A bit of advice- try putting them together ahead of time.  We somehow ended up with two different kinds of assembly, and they were a little bit tricky!

Kite Making

Flying Kites

Making Kites

-Pinata
sign: Curious George Pinata Party

Pinata

Pinata

-Tee Ball
sign: CG at the Baseball Game

Tee Ball

-Curious George Movie on TV 
sign: CG goes to a Movie

-Dress Up area 
sign: CG goes to a Costume Party
Get out all of those old Halloween costumes!
Make sure you have a variety of sizes for the children invited.

-Dinosaurs 
sign: CG Dinosaur Discovery or CG & the Dinosaur
Set up an area with plastic dinosaurs to play with.

Dinosaur Play Area

-Bowling 
sign: CG goes Bowling
You could set up any toy bowling set, but I found this really cute monkey bowling set!

-Train set 
sign: CG takes a Train or CG at the Railroad Station
Create a play area with wooden or plastic train sets.

-Sandbox 
sign: CG goes to the Beach

-Tumbling/climbing Area 
sign: image of CG doing a forward roll
Put out gym mats, crawling tunnels, and any climbing toys/equipment for children to play.

-Monkeying Around game
Use game as a centerpiece on the kids table.  If you have more than one table, other good ones to use would be Tumblin' Monkey game, or Barrel of Monkeys

Monkeying Around game in center of table

-Monkey Mouth game 
sign: CG Goes to the Dentist
I don't know if Discovery Toys still makes this game, but it's a cute concept where you take playdoh & make teeth for the plastic monkey.

-Storytime- Before lunch (pizza) we read "Curious George & the Pizza Parlor"
Other CG books were scattered around for reading.

More CG Books for kids to read

-Pin the Banana on George
Print  up bananas with each child's name.

Pin the Banana on George

-Limbo 

We used Giraffalaff Limbo game.

Below is the flow of our party.  
We were lucky that the weather was nice, so we could do many activities outside.  

As children arrived, they were able to do some of the indoor free play stations.

Dinosaurs
Monkey Mouth
Monkeying Around Game
Dress up

Storytime (CG and the Pizza Parlor)

Lunch

Go outside for activities:

        Kite Building

        Kite flying

        Parade- Musical Instruments

        March to Feed Goats

        Baseball 

Go inside for cake- sing Happy Birthday

Pin the Banana on George

Limbo

Pinata & outside free play

Free Play (outside)

Bowling
Tumbling / Jungle Gym
Sandbox
Trains

Additional game ideas:
Hide & Seek (CG Finds a Friend, CG Hide & Seek)
Seed/Flower Planting (CG plants a Seed or CG plants a tree)
Ride on vehicles/bikes (CG Rides a Bike)
Tent or smores making (CG goes Camping)
Scavenger Hunt (CG Lost & Found)
Elefun (image of CG with butterflies)
Finger Painting (image of CG with paint)
Musical Chairs
Paper bag monkey puppets
Monkey See / Monkey Do (aka Simon Says)
Monkeying Around ring toss
Monkey in the Middle
Hula Hoops
Bananagrams (for older siblings that might attend)
Curious George Bingo - get images of CG show characters and make into bingo cards
      I got pretty far into doing this, but then figured we wouldn't have enough time to play it.
Here's the sample I created...

 

More Curious George Book Titles (It might spark an idea for an activity that will work for you!)
CG and the Dog Show
CG at the Zoo
CG Builds a Home
CG Cleans Up
CG Tadpole Trouble
CG Takes a Trip
CG The Boat Show
CG The Donut Delivery
CG to the Rescue
CG and the Birthday Surprise
CG and the Dump Truck
CG and the Firefighters
CG and the Hot Air Balloon
CG and the Puppies
CG at the Aquarium
CG gets a Medal
CG goes to a Chocolate Factory
CG goes to the Hospital
CG in the Big City
CG in the Snow
CG Learns the Alphabet
CG makes Pancakes
CG Takes a Job
CG Visits a Toy Store
CG Visits the Library
CG Visits the Zoo
CG First Day of School


Related Posts:
Curious George Party Invitations & Decorations
Curious George Party Food & Goodies 

Added:  Here is the banana I used for the "Pin the Banana on George" game...

Knight Party- Games & Activities

GAMES & ACTIVITIES

-Shield making- we assembled the shields ahead of time, so the children were able to get to work decorating them with markers, stickers, gluing cut out pictures (printed some from this website), and stick-on gems.

Shield Making Supplies

Completed shields

-Get dressed in armor Tunic, helmet, and choosing their balloon sword.

Knight Costume

Going to storm the "castle" (playset)

Selection of Balloon Swords

-Pony rides- hired local pony to give children rides for an hour.  We took photos of each child in their Knight Costume riding the pony.

-Knight Tattoos- as children were waiting for their pony ride, they could chose a temporary tattoo.  We set up a kid-size chair and table as the tattoo station, and had goblets with water & sponges for applying the tattoos.

Tattoo station

-Storm the Castle- While waiting for their pony ride, the children could also play on the playset that we decorated as a castle.

-Dragon Tail Tag- Children stood in line with hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them.  The first child in the line had a dragon hat on, the last child had a green flag tucked into their back pocket or waistband of their pants.  The dragon head had to try to catch the dragon tail.

-Knight's Challenge- We set up two teams.  Each knight took a turn getting on the stick pony, grabbing their joust (a pool noodle cut in half, and white tape used to make spiral design) and running across the field, jumping over a paper moat (complete with fake alligators), to slay a toy dragon that was sitting on top of a wash basket.  Then the Knight had to rescue the princess doll that was trapped under the basket & return to the starting line.
We set this up with each team being across the field from the other, so that as one team returned with the princess, we had an adult assigned to stick it back under the other team's wash basket so it would be set up for the next brave knight to arrive!

Knight's Challenge supplies (x2)

Placed teams across from each other for ease of
the "reset" for the next knight.

-Story time- we read The Knight and The Dragon as the children ate their lunch.  There were other books on hand for the kids to browse if they finished lunch earlier than the rest.

-Pin the Sword/Shield on the Knight

-Find the Chalice- Split children into two teams. Played like capture the flag, but with silver goblets instead (the same ones used for holding the tattoo water/sponges earlier).  Each team hides their chalice and then they try to find the chalice of the other team.

-Slay the Dragon Pinata- we used a wooden sword (painted gold) to hit the pinata.


Additional game ideas:
Pin the tail on the Dragon
Sword in the Stone- place some cut out swords inside gray balloons and then inflate.  Kids get to pop the balloons and get a reward if they find a sword.

Related Posts:
Knight Party- Invitations & Decorations
How to Make Armor Tunics
Knight Party- Food & Goodies