5725

Solar System Party -5yr- Musical Planets

Feb 2003

Juliet in Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Honorable Mention

Solar System Party; son's 5th birthday party, for 10 children. We timed the party from 4:30-6:30pm, so that it started while it was light outside, and finished in the dark (party held in February). We also had a total of 5 adults present, to help with food, games, music, taking photographs etc. 

We started with outside games, preparing us for outer space.
1. Flying practice with flying saucers (frisbees)

2. Air breathing practice (blowing bubbles)

3. Map making (build a toilet paper solar system - idea from the local Tech museum - uses 100 sheets of toilet paper. Sticker of sun on first sheet, Pluto on last sheet, other planets at correctly scaled distances in between.)

4. Alien glow to look right in outer space (body glitter on face, hands, hair)  Then we went inside. The living room was decorated with inflatable astronauts, aliens, stars and moons (all from Oriental Trading), and helium balloons, suspended from fishing line spread across the room.

5. Launch rockets into outer space (As the children went inside, they were handed a hand crush launcher and 3 foam rockets (2") - from Oriental Trading.

6. Search for Moon Rocks (50 balls of lightly crushed aluminum foil were hidden around the living room. Each child had to find 5 - because it was a 5th birthday party)

7. Pass the meteorite (pass the parcel, with a small toy in each layer. Child holding parcel when the music stops gets to open one layer)

8. Musical planets (musical chairs, but when the music stopped each child had to stand on a planet - we had built and painted scale model paper planets in the days preceding the party.) As the children were knocked out of the musical planets game, they moved on to.

9. Pin the earth on the solar system (using a poster of the solar system, with the earth cut out. Blind-folded, each child stuck on a round disc representing where they thought the earth would be.) 

10. Wash hands, sit down for bithday meal. Menu was: boiled egg sliced suns, baby carrot sun rays, Baby Bell cheese sliced round moons, hot dog rockets. Sliced banana suns, krispie treat asteroids.

11. Cake. Decorated with a diagram of the solar system on the top. The writing was round the side. First we sang the planet song (One little, two little, three little planets), then Happy Birthday to You. We sang more songs while they ate cake - all with star, sun or moon theme, e.g. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

12. Teach the aliens the Hokey Kokey. (Hokey Kokey, but with some kids holding  inflatable aliens and doing the actions with them.)

13. Roll that planet round the room (variation on the action song "roll that little ball round the room)

14. Flashlight fun. Each child got a flashlight with plastic disc covers in the shapes of aliens, Saturn, star, etc. - again from Oriental Trading. We replaced our regular light bulb with a blue light bulb, giving just enough light to see by. We hid the moon rocks over again, and the kids hunted for them by flashlight.

15. Back to earth game. (Big globe punch balls - from Oriental Trading)

16. Goodie bags. The kids got to take home their flashlights, a punchball, some body glitter sachets and planet stickers.

17. Stargazing. As the parents started to arrive, we all went outside to look at the stars, identifying Orion for the children.

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