13383

Summer Party -9yr- The Clapping Game

April 2006

Susan in Myrtle Beach, SC

Runner Up

My daughter's birthday is the end of April.  So, we did "getting ready for summer" activities.  Her theme was "Fun in the Sun...All Night Long" since it was a sleepover.  She was turning 9 and invited her best girl friends.  I used Evite.com to send out the invitations.  I LOVE that site.  It's so convenient.

We decorated the house with sunshine cutouts I purchased from the local party store. 

As the guest arrived, we let them put their stuff away and then gave them a Word Search puzzle to work.  I went to discoverykids.com and used their free service to make your own word search.  I used all the names of the guest plus words that are related to summer.  Once everyone was there, they decorated their own can koozie.  I purchased them from Michael's for $1 each.  I also bought a bucket of small foam letters and summer shapes (flip-flops, beach balls, sunshines and sun glasses) that are sticky on the back.  The girls used these to decorate their koozies. 

Throughout the party, I had bottled soft drinks iced down in a party bucket.  The girls were able to put their drink in their personalized koozie and then they knew which was their drink.  Plus all drinks had lids that could be closed and kept down spills.  After koozies were finished, I brought out foam sun-visors and they decorated these too.  By then it was time for dinner (Birthday girls favorites:  Chicken strips, french fries, carrots and ranch dressing, cucumbers and tomatoes). 

After dinner we played games that had a summer "twist".  First we went outside for running games.  1.  MELTING BUTTER:  What does butter do in summer?  It melts.  To play, pick someone to be "it." That player runs around and tries to tag the other players.  When someone is tagged, she starts to melt. (It works best if you count to ten s l o w l y while you melt.)  Someone who's not "it" has to tap her again before she melts all the way down to the ground. When she's tapped, the player who was melting can run around again.  The first person to melt all the way to the ground is "it" during the next round. 

2.  MUSICAL FROGS:  When you're outside at night in the summer, what do you hear?  Frogs singing!  To play, you need a radio or something to play music. You'll also need lily pads. (You can use something to represent lily pads, like small pillows, or you can make them out of green construction paper.  I used green paper plates.)  I was the referee.   This game is a lot like musical chairs, but when the music starts, players have to hop around like frogs.  While players are hopping, the referee takes away a lily pad, and then stops the music.  When the music stops, the frogs have to find a lily pad to hop on. The frog left without a lily pad is out. The last frog on a lily pad is the winner. 

3.  STUCK IN THE MUD:  After it rains in the summer, you might get stuck in the mud!  To play, pick someone to be "it."  When "it" tags someone, she is stuck in the mud and can't move.  To get unstuck, someone else has to crawl through her legs.  To make it harder, you can add this twist. If a player touches the stuck player's legs when crawling through them,  then they are stuck too.    If everybody gets tagged, the game is over.  The last person to be tagged is "it" in the next round. 

4.  SMELLY SHOES:  What happens when your feet get sweaty in the summer?  Smelly shoes!  To play, everyone finds a partner.  One person from each pair puts on a blindfold. The other person takes off her shoes and puts them in a pile with everybody else's shoes.  To play, the people who are blindfolded have to find their partners' shoes and put them on their partners' feet.  Players who are not blindfolded can help guide, but they are not allowed to touch their shoes.  The first pair to finish wins. 

The girls were just about worn out by this point.  We came back inside and played memory so we could sit down.  I had a cute summer-time party tray filled with 9 items that you would need/use in the summer.  (sunscreen, sun glasses, flip-flop, sun visor, small beach ball, shovel, lei, sea shell, plastic fish.)  We gave them 15 seconds to look at the items and then we took the tray away.  They then had 1 minute to write down as many things as they could remember.  Before I uncovered the tray, I said for them to remember EVERYTHING they saw under the cloth.  That included the tray.  No one got all ten because they didn't get the tray.  It was too cute because they were still talking about not noticing the tray the next morning! 

By this time, it was time for cake, ice cream and presents!  The cake turned out cuter than I had expected.  She wanted a sunshine cake.  I made two 8" round cakes.  I tinted 2 containers of vanilla frosting with yellow tint.  I frosted 8 sugar cones and let them "dry".  I then frosted the cake and attached the cones around the edge to resemble the sunbeams.  I thought it was great like it was but my daughter wanted a face.  I luckily had a box of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies and used two of those for eyes.  I would have used black licorice, but I didn't have any.  I ended up using about 8 black jellybeans to make the smile.  She loved it!  After she opened her presents, I told them one more game. 

We talked about how nice it is to sleep late on Saturday mornings, so we played I WOKE UP SATURDAY MORNING.  It sounds complicated but the girls caught on so quickly.  They played this several times before going to be and then again the next morning.  Here are the rules.  This is a clapping game.  Players sit in a circle and put both hands out in front of them with palms facing up.  Overlap hands so your right hand is above the left hand of the person sitting on your right. (Get it?!)  One person starts by reaching over with their right hand and clapping the right hand of the person sitting on their left.  The clap is passed around the circle while the group says this rhyme: I woke up Saturday morning I looked up on the wall I saw a team of roaches playing basketball. The score was ten to nothing the roaches in the lead I got a can of bug spray, one, two three!  If a player's hand is clapped on "three," that player is out.  If the player pulls her hand away in time, and the person claps their own hand, then that person is out. When there are only two people left in the game, the hand positions change. Player 1 holds both hands out, palms facing up. Player 2 slaps Player 1's hands with both of his hands, palms facing down. Now, Player 2 holds his hands out, and Player 1 slaps his hands.  Play continues until there is only one person left!  We never could figure out who won when it was just 2, so we also had a tie!  After this we had time for one more craft.  We painted flip-flop sun catchers.  I purchased these from AC Moore along with the sun catcher paint and suction cup hangers too.  They turned out SO darling!!  I wrote their names on the paper label attached to the back so I would know who it belonged to.  Then they left them on the table to dry overnight. 

Got ready for bed.  Watched two movies and went to sleep.  The next morning, I removed the label from the sun catcher and put it in a goody bag along with a small beach ball, some candy, a party popper and the cutest magnets I was fortunate to find from Target.  They were in the $1 section.  They are tiny "post card" magnets with a cute dog in a birthday party hat and the saying "greetings from my party".  I stuffed the goody bags down into their koozies and set them out with their sun visors for them to take home.

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