16715

Fear Factor Party (11-12yr) Organ Transplant

October 2007

Heidi in ELmwood IL USA

Runner Up

We decided to have a Fear Factor Birthday Party for my eleven year old son.  We have had many Birthday Parties over the years with three kids including some that were huge hits with their friends and parents.  It is hard to come up with ideas that  the kids will love year after year that are different from years before.  We are fortunate to have a very large backyard.  I put alot of thought and research in to this party in order to make sure I had challenges that were safe, fun and actually challenging but yet parents would not think I was totally insane and not let their kids hang around mine!  We invited 15 kids plus my three, only two did not come and my oldest son who is a teenager only participated when we had to even things up for teams or partners or something. 

For invitations, I went to Michaels and purchased the large card kit with 200 notecards and envelopes for $20.00 (lots of parties this year, housewarming, 3 kids birthdays and our annual Halloween and Christmas parties).  I chose the orange (only because I already used the yellow) and used a spooky font on the computer and printed them myself.  They read:  Is FEAR a FACTOR for you?  If not...   Please join us at _________________________________'s Birthday Party, on DATE, TIME  ADDRESS then we put meet us at the campfire around back!  There will be plenty of food and fun for everyone.  Please wear old clothes and dress for the weather. All stunts and challenges are optional.  RSVP to PHONE and EMAIL. We scheduled the party from 5-8 but we ran way over!  Probably because of how long I let them play on their own before starting structured things!

We had hot dogs and chips for dinner that the kids cooked themselves over the fire--very low maintenance-kids this age can do alot for themselves and really take the load off of us at parties.  They played football for an hour before we even got started on the challenges.  It was a boy/girl party but only one of the girls invited came and then my daughter was there. I also bought four kinds of soda when it was on sale 4 for $10.00.  That allowed a variety but  kept the cost down at the same time.  And there was plenty for everyone. I was also fortunate to have my sister and her husband to help and a set of parents stayed and helped-it was great and made our job easier!  Six adults to supervise and help made the party run much smoother. I got all my ideas from the internet, some from this site, some from others and tweaked them to make them work for us.

The first challenge was a baby pool filled with water and ice (wait til the very last minute to add a couple bags of ice for extra chill!)  We have a very small pool-the smallest plastic one we could find for the dogs this summer to play in (they never did)-it was filled halfway with water and we added two supersize bags of ice a half hour before the party then just before the first kid got in, we dramatically added two more supersized bags of ice.  In the pool of ice and water we added plastic spiders and plastic rats.  Each kids was given 30 seconds to get as many critters out of the pool as possible.  Spiders were worth two points, rats were worth one point.  Whoever got the most points won the challenge.  I had bags of prizes made up including movie size boxes of candy and party favor type toys.  We scored the whole thing instead of eliminating kids so everyone participated til the end. 

The kids were awarded the points they earned.  For example: one kid put out 4 plastic spiders and one rat-they received 9 points on the scoreboard.  We had one little girl get 39 points!  If they did not make it 30 seconds in the pool, we docked their score by two points per second they did not last. The supplies were cheap (pool $6.00, spiders $3.00, rats $4.00, ice $12.00).  Probably the best part of that game was the trash talking the kids did to each other-it was hilarious-we laughed so hard.  One little girl was so supportive of everyone telling them it is warm-trying to help everyone make it through!  The little guy who was the worst trash talker of all got in the pool and was shrieking about how cold it was!  It was so funny!

Our next challenge really was gross.  We adapted the Organ Transplant" idea from another post.  I bought two new red buckets and tin pans.  In the red buckets I put Pig ears pig stomach beef liver beef heart beef kidney spaghetti noodles canola oil olives diced tomatoes and  little bit of tomato juice and mixed it all up.  I cooked all the parts all the way through.  I purchased these items at a butcher shop for veryminimal money-nothing cost more that $3.00 a package and there was at least two of everything.  I also gave the pig ears and the liver to the dogs after the game was done! 

One of everything went in to the buckets-those were set at the far end of the yard.  They had to run down get something out of the bucket bring it back down and drop it into the tin pan-it was about 100 feet down to the bucket from the starting line.  I told the kids that they could dig through the bucket with their hands and pull out a part or they could use their mouths whichever they wanted however if they used their hands they got one point if they used their mouths they got five points.  Winners received 20 bonus points and if they could identify the parts they received 5 points per item identified (they identified four of the five)  Second place got 15 bonus points (no identification bonus) third place got 10 bonus points (no identification bonus)and fourth place got 5 bonus points (no identification bonus) provided all members of the team completed the challenge. The team with the most points got full size bags of skittles or starburst. Very minimal cost to this challenge as well.

The third challenge was the ever popular and mandatory eating challenge.  I went to the grocery store and bought mushrooms (portabella) jalepenos baby food peas and veal spam vienna sausages tomato juice octopus (canned) sardines (canned) and at target I bought these marshmallow eyeball things.  I put them on plated that had covers-the hefty plates that snap together and numbered them.  I then put numbers in balloons and blew them up.  The kids had to sit on the balloon of their choice and they had to eat the  numbered plate that corresponded to the number in the balloon.  The kids loved this!  Each plate was different and due to the lack of RSVP's I had to prepare some plates at the last minute using stuff in my fridge! 

Here are some of the ideas:  Vienna sausages we called ape fingers spam was ground sheep skin the eyes were lion eyes sheep eyes or dog eyes depending on the color.  Coagulated cow blood was strawberry preserves and ketchup (yuck).  We also did duck vomit with ketchup mustard and relish.   We also used these noodles from the ethnic food section that were really slimy looking and called those beaver intestine. 

Anyway couple of warnings-make sure you are aware of food allergies when they get their plate so that they don't eat something they are allergic to.  If kids don't want to do it-they don't have to-I kept reminding them of that.  And jalepenos was a bad idea-one little girl cried for a while because her mouth was burning-she bit into the jalepeno and immediately spit it out and she had watery eyes and the red face-poor thing!  I felt terrible especially since my son has a HUGE crush on her!  I told her mom when she got there and her mom was not upset but I still felt bad!  If you opt for the peppers gut them first.  Points were awarded like this: 10 points for each section completed (everyone had 3 things) and 25 bonus points if you ate the whole plate.  I was amazed at how some of the kids downed the sardines and octopus and quit at baby food peas which I called pig bile.  They were really funny during this challenge. 

I did provide lots of water and milk for anyone who wanted it during and after eating.  We had no pukers.  There were two top eaters who each got a prize! At this point we served cake and ice cream and let my son open presents (the cake was chocolate inside and had white frosting with black and yellow lettering-I added eyeballs and candles-it was very cute).  While the kids were busy I added up points and announced the top three scorers would go on to the final challenge.  The final challenge was as follows:  An obstacle course which started with each child being chained around their middles with padlocks they started in chairs at one end of our wrap around porch they had to run around the porch to the waiting aquarium full of live crickets and superworms that I bought at the pet store.  (100 crickets and 25 superworms cost me $8.00)  At the bottom of the aquarium under crickets worms and bouncy balls that looked like eyeballs was a bunch of keys. 

They got one free shot at a key.  If that key did not open their lock they had to earn more tries by answering trivia questions if they got a question wrong they were eliminated (we tried to make sure they had a reasonable shot at getting them right).  Once they got themsleves unlocked they had to run a course four saw horses (they had to go over one under the next over the next and under the last one they had to run over a ladder putting a foot down between rungs and walk an 8 foot beam jump the icy swimming pool and cross the finish line.  The one of the three with the best time won the big prize which was a big bag of m&m's a game called monster match and a $5.00 movie theater gift certificate (which in our town will get you into the movies and buy you a box of candy!). 

After we were done we made s'mores over the fire pit.   No one wanted to go home and most wound up spending the night.  They had a ball.  I was surprised they had as much fun as they did-but they really loved it.  The adults had a great time too-they were fun to watch. If you decide to have a party like this or even use any of the challenges as a party game-think it through be prepared-have towels puke buckets water milk lip gloss whatever you can think of ready and handy if you find a kid is not handling something well.  We had no one making fun of anyone else for not doing something which was awesome but I made it very clear that was not going to be tolerated.  I was amazed at how much they supported each other.  It was an awesome party-I am glad I did it and I am going to carry over some of the challenges and games to my daughter's SURVIVOR party!  This party was clearly a hit and what a hoot to put on!    "

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