Hunter has just turned 7, and he had his first ever individual party (the boys have birthdays 2.5 weeks apart so normally we combine their parties).  This year we decided to start giving a party on alternate years and Hunter was up first.  He requested a pokemon themed party as that is what he loves at the moment, and I thought I’d share, not only how it went, but what I did to stay on theme in the hopes that some other poor mother out there can use this to make their lives easier when they try to do the same thing!

I’ve tried to add as many links as possible to the websites I used for inspiration or assistance.  Pinterest is always a great starting block, I have a page called Birthday that might come in handy, you can see that here.

Invitations

I really didn’t see the need to spend much money on invitations, we have a budget I like to at least try to stick to and thought this was something I could definitely do myself.  There are some gorgeous invites on Etsy but instead I just used a Microsoft Publisher to make my own.  I used some pictures of pokemon after googling “creative commons + pokemon” and a fantastic website called Fontmeme to generate a pokemon font.  The finished product was printed on some card I grabbed from an office supply store, I think they looked pretty good!

Games

This is the first time I’ve really given any thought to games before.  This is the first time the kids have had a party and been old enough to play a proper party game- so I may have gone a little overboard!   We had:

Pokemon Bingo

This was a favorite to my surprise! I included it thinking it would be a good way to calm the kids down if things got too rowdy, and I generated the bingo sheets and call sheet from here. I looked up the names of the pokemon in Hunters book, but it would work just as well if you simply pick a card and hold it up for everyone to see.   To play you need:

• Printer, ink and paper
• Bingo sheets for each child (you simply hit refresh on the Custom Bingo sheets and it changes the order of pictures)- I laminated mine so we could reuse them, but that isn’t a must.
• A call sheet of all the pokemon which is generated at the same time as the bingo sheets- simply print and cut out.
• Whiteboard markers (if you laminate the bingo sheets), or markers for the kids to cross off the bingo squares

How we played; the kids each received a bingo card and a marker, which they used to mark off each pokemon I called out.  The first person to say bingo won a prize.

Pin the tail on the Pikachu 

This probably was something that could have been bought and would have saved me an awful lot of time, but I made mine because I couldn’t find one to buy.  I simply enlarged and printed out a picture of Pikachu in Microsoft Publisher, and then downloaded a free picture of his tail from Google, which I cut out, laminated and cut out a second time because I forgot to print them on card and they were too floppy as plain paper (oops).  You will need:

• Lots of time and patience
• A printer to print an enlarged picture of Pikachu and the tails
• Scissors to cut them out
• Sticky tack or washi tape to stick the picture to the wall, and the tails to Pikachu.
• A blindfold

 

How we played; the kids lined up youngest to oldest and took turns having a blindfold put on and being spun around before being pointed to the pikachu and sticking their tail where they thought it should go.  I marked where they placed their tail and the closest won.

 

Pokeball Hunt

This one is reminiscent of an Easter Egg hunt.  I painted 24 ping pong balls to look like pokeballs and hid them in our back yard, the kids were let loose to find the pokeballs.  For each pokeball they found they received a lolly, there was also a prize for who ever found the most pokeballs, and who ever showed the best manners and was the kindest (in the hopes there would be less pushing and fighting). What you’ll need is:

• White ping pong balls
• Red & black paint
• Paint brush
• Egg carton or something to rest them on as they dry
• Endless patience and a few tears of frustration

I painted half of each ping pong ball red and rested them in an egg carton so they wouldn’t roll around if I had to move them.  I’ve seen people tape half the ball so they didn’t have to worry about being as neat while painting, but I found it took more time to tape the balls as it did to be a little ore careful, so that’s what I did.  After the red paint was dry I painted a black line around them and a circle in the middle of that line- done.

Pass the parcel

This has to be the classic birthday party game, and the kids loved it.  I made our parcel a little different by tying each layer with red string, so the kids knew when to stop unwrapping- it worked a treat!

Each ‘normal’ layer was a sheet of newspaper, tied with string, and had a lollipop, the final layer contained a small toy.  Tip; choose music that doesn’t have any pauses in it- the kids get really upset if you have to keep telling them that the music hasn’t really stopped and they have to keep going!

 

So there are a few ideas for you to use- I hope they come in handy!  Check out my next Pokemon post (coming in a few days) for more tips and tricks!