9496

Fire Fighter -6yr- Pin the Hat on the Fire Dog

September 2004

Holly in Rock Hill, SC (USA)

Special Mention

6-year-old Firefighter Themed Party 

Invitation:  Invitations were created in Adobe Photoshop 7 with a fire truck photo in the background (with altered opacity) and the informational text on top of the photo. These were printed on 4x6 pieces of photo paper. They read Attention All Volunteer Firefighters. Fire Chief (birthday boy’s name) needs your help putting out some blazes and celebrating his 6th birthday party. Report to Duty: with time/date/place information following. I also made themed return address labels and addressed the envelopes in red pen. 

Highlight of the Party:  The highlight of the party was definitely the fact that we had a visit to a local fire station. The kids just LOVED this. We had the parents/kids meet there and we did that portion of the party first. They did not charge me a dime. They let the kids have free reign of the truck. They were allowed to try on both the clothes/boots of the firemen as well as the large hats. The fireman that was leading this was SO good with the kids.

After they played on the truck for a while, he took them around the truck and showed them what all the equipment, gadgets and supplies were used for. Then we moved inside where he gave everyone a tour of the station itself, including bathrooms, weight room, sleeping areas, everything! He explained the ins and outs of it all and everyone was very interested, even the adults. We had more Dads at this party than most due to the theme!

The kids loved everything that had to do with the fire station. If the fireman said let’s go see the bathrooms, they’d all yell Yaaaay at the top of their lungs, as if they’d never seen a bathroom! We practically had to drag the kids away. This all took about an hour, and the 2nd hour of the party was spent at a church gym. 

Decorations:  We purchased plates and napkins with a fireman theme. The bakery made the cake based on these. We also purchased additional plates and napkins in solid reds as extras. We bought balloons and streamers in red, black and yellow because they had the right look and also coordinated well with the plates we chose. We just offered basic snacks and drinks.  

Goodies:  Instead of buying the matching goodie bags, I bought plain red bags at Michael’s. Using large foam letter stamps and yellow acrylic paint, I stamped each bag with the child’s name. The bags were left empty. The kids were to fill them with prizes they won during the party. When they first arrived at the gym they were given a fire gas mask (purchased in sets at the Dollar Tree).  

Games:  I had to re-plan all the games at the last minute due to the threat of bad weather. The party was originally scheduled at a park and we had to move it to an indoor location. The original games were all water-based, which we could not do inside!  

The first game was a pin the tail on the donkey style game where they had to pin the fire hat on the dog (which was in a fire truck). This game was purchased online with the party supplies for less than $2 and included a blindfold as well as the hat stickers and poster. All the kids received fire badges for participating and the actual winners won fire axes (both from Dollar Tree sets).  

The second game was an obstacle course. We created it by place chairs facing each other in two sets so they had to climb over those. Then they had to grab a balloon (taped to a table), crawl under the table, put the balloon under a blanket and sit on it to pop it. (I got the balloon popping idea here at the website). It was hilarious to watch them attempt to pop the balloons. They loved it and kept playing until they had popped every balloon in the room. After popping the balloon, they were able to choose a prize from the prize bucket which include whistles, pretend walkie talkies, pretend watches and fire man sticker sheets (all from the Dollar Tree).  

Next was the fire truck piñata, which took the birthday boy’s 16-year-old cousin to beat the candy out of! After that, they were told to go around and collect all the little red firemen that they could and they could keep them. We had bought a bag of ‘army men’ that were red and actually firefighters (again, the Dollar Tree) and put them all over the room as part of the decorations.   To conclude we had cake and opened gifts.

Overall, it was a fantastic party that the kids loved. I was very pleased with our visit to the fire station and would recommend that to anyone. We baked cookies and brownies the next day and took them by the station. The men were all watching football and seemed to appreciate it.   Thank you:  During the party, I took a lot of photos, especially of the kids trying on the clothes and hats at the fire station. I plan on printing extras of these to include with the thank you notes, which will probably be created on the computer with some fire graphics. I will have the birthday boy sign his own name on each one.

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