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| Liam's lunch box - showing some wear from washing. |
So I googled about parties to see what other parents had done. There are several other blogs that provided great ideas, notably http://karascreativeplace.blogspot.com/2011/05/wild-kratts-birthday-party.html, http://crazywonderfullifeofmine.blogspot.com/2011_06_06_archive.html, http://www.furrowedstitches.com/2011/07/party-wild-kratts-style.html, and http://4teamplayers.blogspot.com/2011/06/abrams-6th-birthday-party-wild-kratts.html.
I put together the invitation using MS Word and an inserted WK picture. I tried a couple different ones, and decided on this:
One of my friends, Kate Boston, is much craftier than I am. She agreed to make the Creature Power suits following a template from one of the above blogs (Thanks again, Kate!). They came out awesome. We opted to go with solid black for the vests with different colored trim and paw print for each. While she was working on that, I started working on the games and the Creature Power "discs."
I'd decided on 5 discs per suit and needed to create games to go with each disc. So my husband and I borrowed some that others had created, and brainstormed some new ones of our own.
I figured you have to have a self-paced one for the arrival time as not everyone arrives all at once. I thought it would be good to do a Zebra Camouflage disc, since the stripe work as camouflage in making the individual zebras hard to pick out. I'd picked up a book for Liam's birthday, Usborne's The Great Animal Search by Caroline Young, so I copied the African Plains page (which featured zebras). Each 2 page layout features a ton of animals to find. This way we can have the kids find the zebras and a couple other animals to get their disc, then they can work on finding other animals while waiting on the rest of the kids to arrive.
Once everyone is here, we'll move outside for the next 3 games: Cheetah Tag and Butterfly Chrysalis (both thanks to the existing blogs) and one my husband helped refine, the Kangaroo Hop.
For Cheetah Tag, I made Cheetah Tails out of yellow and black felt (I had to use superglue as my regular craft glue wasn't strong enough to withstand children tugging on the tails). I threw on a piece of velcro at the end to fasten it to the vest. Each child has to grab one Cheetah Tail to turn it in for the Cheetah power disc.
The Kangaroo Hop will be a sack race, using pillowcases from the dollar store (since we won't be using them for pillows EVER). Once each kid has jumped the course distance, they earn their Kangaroo power disc.
The Butterfly Chrysalis was a genius idea, also from an existing blog, where we picked up rolls of toilet paper from the dollar store to wrap each kid in. They have to bust out of their "chrysalis" to earn the Butterfly power disc.
Lastly, back inside for cupcakes (with paw prints on top, of course). The final disc is Raccoon power, which they earn by washing their hands with soap and water and having their hands inspected by an adult raccoon to see if they mastered the raccoon power.
I also picked up a pinata from Party City's Jungle Animal party collection - it's a pull-string Lion Head pinata. I got the plates and napkins there as well. For the pinata bags, I bought plain white lunch bags and pasted on a WK picture. I did the same thing for the favor bags.
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| Pinata bags and favor bags |
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| Favor bags filled and ready to go |
