Xavier turned 5 last Friday, and his birthday party was Sunday. His favorite super hero is Hulk, and when trying to come up with ideas for a birthday party for him that we could host here at our house, we hit on the theme of the big green guy. Cost was a consideration as well as logistics. We just weren’t sure how many of his preschool friends would show up. You can invite the whole class, only have half the invitees RSVP. We expected this, which was part of our plan to host the party at our house. Out of the half we heard from some were yes, some were no, so we had a rough idea of who would and wouldn’t show, but were prepared for more.
The first activity we had set up was mask making. This was something kids could elect to do or not, a sort of gathering thing that would kill time as everybody arrived. We spent some money on etsy, purchasing a series of mask templates then chose a few of them and printed them out on cardstock. We limited the choices to 4 different ones, but offered stickers and markers to decorate and alter the masks as kids saw fit. There were scissors to cut the masks out, and some elastic and a stapler to enable the masks to get placed on kids’ heads.
After everybody arrived we moved on to our first game. Previously we decorated a big box like a skyscraper. Using some Hulk Hands (or whatever they are called, you can find them in the toy section) kids would enact out . Placing the “building” on top of another box kids SMASHED the building to see who could get it to travel the furthest. We used a tape measure and made sure the base of the building was always at the same spot. Some kids walked up to the building to smash it, other took a running start. I think the furthest was 119 inches.
Our second game was a variation of Pin The Tail On The Donkey. We had purchased an oversized poster coloring book of Avengers, with one of them being Hulk. With some window paint/markers the idea was to get the green dot on Hulk’s nose. This was a fun activity, and having the kids go from inside to outside to inside then back outside again helped to manage the group quite well.
Then it was cake time!
Yes, cake in the middle of the party.
By breaking up the activities both in type and location we managed the group of preschoolers quite well. After cake there were “stations” set up in the house as well as outside. Mostly these were just some “free play” type things, coloring some of the pages from that Avengers poster coloring book, etc. After a little bit of time (cleaning up while the kids played) we got out the pinata.
It was a pull-string pinata, the only kind that had Hulk on it. I think I over-stuffed it. I didn’t read the directions until after I had already filled it, which said no more than 2 pounds of stuff should be placed inside. I think I had like six pounds of candy and cheap toys in there.
Finally we had one more game, another Hulk Smash game. This time we blindfolded the kids and timed them using the big hands to smash down paper cups. We placed 15 cups in front of a blindfolded child and gave them 20 seconds to squash as many as they could. While it was the least successful of the games of the party, it was still enjoyable enough by those who participated. A few of the kids chose to go back to their “free choice” activities.
With that the party was over and there was nothing but aftermath to deal with.
All told – this was a fun hour and a half.
With a few purchases a the store and a little imagination you too could have a successful Hulk-themed birthday party.