11909

Gobbledegook Contract -10yr- Make Lolly Pops

August 2005

Jo in Bristol, Avon, UK

Honorable Mention

Willy Wonka Party (10 year old) 

To coincide with the release of the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we decided to hold a birthday party for Morgan who was ten. We downloaded replica's of the real golden tickets from the Internet and  printed them off and stuck them onto Gold Card. These were used as invites for the Party. 

When the children arrived with their golden tickets at the room we had hired for the party, they had to give them to one of the adults we had persuaded to pretend to be an Oompa Loompa. (He had the dance down to a tee!) The Oompa Loompa ushered the child to the decorated entrance, where there was a veil of streamers to walk through and a big sign "Morgan and the Chocolate Factory" to meet Morgan's Dad, who was dressed as Willy Wonka, complete with long coat, top hat, boots with shiny "W" stuck on and an old vodka promotional tube with the drink removed and filled with sweets and candy!  They met Willy who took the ticket and showed them a contract to sign which we had invented based on the one in the film, and mounted on shiny gold card. It went along the lines of "We the party of the above party, do promise to enjoy the party of the above party" etc, all legal gobbledegook. You can even get a small copy of the one from the Gene Wilder film off the Internet. The children all signed the contract, which Morgan kept as a souvenir, then had their photo taken with Willy. 

The room was decorated with large paintings of candy bars and sweets, with giant long balloons, stuck up to look like Oompa Loompas, with faces drawn on. There were sweets scattered around the room and on the shelves. The video of the film was playing in the background. Once inside, the children went to an "Inventing Table" which was run by an adult.

One table had circles of card cut out for the children to design their own lolly pop with pens and collage and glitter. A straw stuck on for the stick. They were displayed round the room and later Willy chose the best design.

Another Inventing Table had a Taste Test, with the adult obviously explaining that they wouldn't normally do this without adult supervision. There were saucers of e.g. flour, choc powder, salt, sugar, coffee, cinnamon, etc and the children had to taste them and write the answers on a sheet. The ones who got them all right had a prize.

Another Inventing Table had an adult with the children decorating digestive biscuits with simple coloured icing sugar and sprinkles. They were put in a plastic bag and put in their party bags to take home. 

For other games Willy led the show. We had managed to get a large poster from the Johnny Depp film and the children were blindfolded and stuck a small pointed golden ticket near the hand, closest one to the thumb won (a la Pin the Tail on the Donkey). It's worth mentioning that the Oompa Loompa gave out mini gold tickets to the winners of the games and at the end of the party the ones with the most gold tickets had the biggest prize etc, though everyone got something. Another game was pass the golden egg: when the music stopped, whoever was holding the egg had a golden ticket to put in their collection. We did hunt the everlasting gobstopper (which went in their party bags when found). We gave them bubble gum and they had a bubble blowing competition to see the biggest and best bubbles. We covered a bottle of lemonade with a label "Fizzy Lifting Drink" and they drank that and then we had a competition of who did the best Burps! Hilarious! We had giant bowls of chocolate milk and in teams they had to drink the chocolate milk with long straws. First team to finish got golden tickets. 

Morgan's mum bought a book of Roald Dahl Recipe's (which could easily be picked up e.g. at Amazon), so for the party food she made things like An Enormous Crocodile, Nutty Crunch Surprise, Butterscotch, Snozzcumbers and Frobscottle - famous foods that any Roald Dahl fan would recognise. As well as the usual crisps and cakes etc.

For the cake we printed off a large picture of Willy Wonka from the Internet, taken from the latest film, added the words "Happy Birthday Morgan". We gave this to the baker who somehow superimposed the picture onto the icing of the cake. 

When they left they had party bags made from Gold Paper, with lots of sweets, as well as the biscuit, gobstopper, long straw, carton of chocolate milk and some extra freebies picked up from the cinema. 

It was a fabulous party which I am sure the children will remember. We are having fun watching the video of it all!! Oh and I forgot to say, the party was in Portugal with some Portuguese and some British children, so the whole thing was Bi-lingual!

• Kids Party Home
• Kids by Category
• Kids by A to Z
• Teen Party Ideas
• Adult Party Ideas
• Holiday Party Ideas
• Nutcracker Ballet