19342

Pokemon Party -7yr- Pokeball Invite

February 2009

Nete in Sparta, NJ, USA

Honorable Mention

My boy turned 6 and for the first time he had a big birthday party so he decided to have a Pokemon party. We invited 20 some kids and rented a local clubhouse with hardwood floors for the party.

The invitations were pokeballs and made out of red and white construction paper that was folded and then cut with a circle cutter so it was an almost perfect circle that could be opened like a card. I cut the red circle in half and glued one half on each white circle. The black line was then made with a marker that followed the cut line. On the red part I wrote the invitee's name(s) and on the white part it said: I Choose You". Inside the card I glued in a piece of paper that said: To come to xx birthday party. Come to the battle arena on February 7 from 2 - 4 pm. RSVP by February 5 to (999) 999-9999 or email@webserver. On a separate note I printed the instructions to the battle arena aka the clubhouse.

We had 20 kids coming and to keep it from being total chaos I made a schedule for the party with lots of input from the birthday boy and inspiration from this website. I had also e-mailed my boy's teacher to ask her how she got the attention of the class. That way I could use the same technique and be sure that I could get the kids to listen quickly. So every time I needed to talk to the kids I would clap and say "1-2-3 all eyes on me." It worked like a charm.

We decorated with unicolored streamers in red yellow blue and green and homemade Pokeballs made just like the invitations but now in a one big circle instead. I also managed to find a huge poster board on which I drew Pikachu without a tail and colored it with poster paint and a black marker. It turned out to be really good according to my kids. I used some coloring pages on the internet as inspiration. I made the tail by drawing it on a separate poster board cutting it out and gluing it to the back of an empty cereal box and cut it out again so it was sturdy. To have it stick on the main poster I put temporary double sided tape on the back of the tail for a game of "Pin the Tail on Pikachu".

I also had a jar filled with 132 Hershey kisses so everybody could guess how many were in there and who had the closest guess got the jar. While we waited for all the kids to arrive the tables had paper crayons markers Pokemon coloring pages that I printed out clean paper foam stickers beads and string for them to have fun with. Once everybody was here we started with "Stop Brock" a freeze dance to "Pokemon X 10 years of celebration" CD which we got the library to buy for the collection. The CD player had a remote control so I could dance along with the kids and stop the music from any position. That had a couple of the kids wondering how the music stopped.

After 15 minutes we moved on to "Misty Says" a Simon says where every child got to be Misty twice starting with the birthday boy. The interest faded fairly quickly though so we moved on to making dusclops or rolling toilet paper on each other. Here the hardwood floors were valuable since it made for easy clean-up. The kids were either in pairs or threes and took turns wrapping toilet paper on each other. After everybody had a turn they collected all the TP in a jiffy. It is amazing how fast kids can clean up when they can have fun "gliding" on the floor to scoop it up - hence the choice of hardwood floors.

After the clean-up the birthday boy's mom and dad "volunteered" to be "dusclopsified" by all the kids. That was done with a lot of enthusiasm and we used up close to 12 rolls of toilet paper. Again the kids were excellent in cleaning up. For more fun I had huge balloons for the kids to blow up and let go so they would fly around and make a funny sound. For the kids that couldn't blow up the balloon I had a pump ready for them so they could take part in the fun. They were supposed to hit a target on the floor that was a drawing of Starmie on a poster board again made with poster paint and a black marker and based on a coloring page. The kids thought it was the funniest thing to have the balloons fly around. Some wanted to put a knot on their balloon and fortunately I had plenty of balloons so they could have one to play with and one to go flying with.

Afterwards it was time for cake and juice. The kids were ready to sit down and relax by that time. The cake was a quarter sheet cake that I had the bakery put a picture of Pikachu surfing on - again a coloring page that was already colored. The bakery put it on as a photo cake. It turned out to be perfect with sharp lines and absolutely no smudges.

After the refreshments it was time for a "Hot Ash" game or a hot potato game. We used a ball that was passed around in a circle and whoever was out was sent to me for a party favor and a balloon animal. The party favor was a Pokemon coloring book and a box of crayons from five-below. Cheap and something that a kid can play with for a while instead of the little plastic things that lose their interest after a couple of minutes and end up under the bed collecting dust. For the balloon animals I found a how-to book in a toy store a few years ago. The party store where I found the Pokemon paper goods had the balloons used to make animals. The kids had a choice of getting a dog cat flower or sword.

For the paper goods I decided to just get the Pokemon cups plates and napkins and use unicolored plastic table covers to save money and not have it be a colorful chaos. For the adults I had a vegetable platter and some cut up fruit to eat on unicolored plates and juice to drink from clear plastic cups. Then it was time to go home and the kids had had a good time.  The party was a success because of the parents that stayed for the whole time. I could not have pulled it off if I didn't have the 6 - 8 parents to help with getting cake and juice to the kids and volunteered to clean up afterwards. We were on schedule throughout the whole party which was amazing considering the number of kids there. A big thank you goes to the parents.

The thank you cards will be made like the invitations like pokeballs but this time the red will have the invitees name on top and the bottom will say: " You were Great" as Ash says to his pokemons when they are done battling. Inside there will be a personal message of thanks.  "

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