Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The Parties Are Over!

Kellen's party was a lot of fun. Of course, it rained in the beginning of the party so I had to rethink how I was going to do things (love when that happens) We started the party making life size knights. The big kids traced the kids' bodies on brown paper and then the boys painted themselves as knights. I found some really cool knight masks and we used them as the faces. I was afraid that some of the kids might not be into this project, but they loved it (and spent over an hour working on their knights).

After painting, the kids got dressed in their costumes. We dressed up in blue and red tunics that I made out of felt. I found the helmets at the dollar store and the kids made their shields out of cardboard.

All of our activities were team oriented. Gold coins were awarded for different things and the team with the most coins at the end won the tournament. The first activity was a scavenger hunt where the knights had to find a horse, a knight, a castle, a jouster, a bag of gold coins, a princess, a pigeon, the Holy Grail and a king.

Then we moved on to shooting a foam arrow through two hula-hoops that I hung from a tree. Every child got two tries to get it through one of the hula hoops. If they got it though the top hoop, they got 2 coins and if they got it through the lower hoop, they got 1 coin. They could have played this game for hours!

Then we had the team catapult activity. The kids moved through the different positions on the catapult (end holders and launcher in the middle) and each team tried to launch their water balloon farther than the other team. This was a little difficult, but it was hilarious when it worked.

We had another bow and arrow activity where we used marshmallow bow and arrows and frozen mini marshmallows. I set up a bunch of empty soda cans and they got a coin for each can that they knocked down with the marshmallow. Again, they could have spent hours doing this.

My friend made a cup cake brown dragon (adapted from an alligator) for Kellen. It was really good-especially the chocolate wings. This picture does not do it justice.

Then we had our joust. I placed rings around the yard and the kids had to ride the hippity hops while carrying a 4 ft. sword. As they got to each ring, they had to try to pick up the ring on the end of their sword. If they knocked the ring over, they had to leave it. Two kids went at a time--we gave a coin for the team that got finished first and a coin for the person who got the most rings. The best part was that the big kids and some of the adults bombarded the kids with water balloons and shot them with the marshmallow bow and arrows while they tried to get the rings.

Of course, we launched the rocket.

The second launch did not go well...we are hoping for a good storm so that we get our rocket back!

This party was so easy! We never got to everything we had planned--I got a bunch of boxes so that each team could make their own castle and then we were going to have a game of Castle Wars.

I might have to have this crew back next Friday so that they can finish the fun! Just kidding...no more parties until December!