The Pirate Party

After a lot of planning and getting the house ready for a ton of kids we had a blast putting on a pirate birthday party for Jacob!

We had a lot of pirate decorations...

A pirate ship cake made by David...

Pirate cupcakes made by me...

and pirate themed games and crafts for the party guests!

The kids played:

• "Walked The Plank" - I divided them up into two teams for a relay race. I then put a 2x4 down on the floor for each team. Following this was a large box to crawl through...this was "The Cave", then I had tossed out over 100 pieces of pirates gold. The kids had to balance across the planks, crawl through the cave, gather some gold, and go back the way they came and tag the next person on their team! It was a blast!
• "Pin the Flag on the X" - I gave the kids a small piece of paper and explained that pirates always had their own flag with a special design on it. I gave them crayons and they designed their very own pirate flag. Then we used those flags to play a pirate version of pin the tail on the donkey. David had made a pirate map and we hung it on the wall, blindfolded the kids, spun them around, and let them try to hit the X with their flag! We had a huge tie!
• "Canon Ball Stomp" - We had blown up a ton of black ballons and used these as our cannonballs. We tied them on the ankles of each child and then they played a game of tag. The object was to protect your own cannonball while trying to pop everyone else's ball!
• "Treasure hunt" - Before the party started I came up with a list of clues, printed them out on paper, cut them up and placed them all over our yard. We started in the party room and the first clue took them outside. The kids all got their jackets and shoes on and out we went.....to the patio, then the mailbox, then the swingset, then the front porch, the a tree in the back yard, then back inside to the sunroom, then the dining room where they hung there coats back up....then back to the party room where my husband had set up the "treasure".... cake, ice cream, and punch!

We even had shark's blood for our punch! To make this I took a punch bowl and had poured 7-up in it. Then with the kids watching I explained that my fruit punch was really sharks blood and I poured that into the 7-up. The punch swirled around like blood and mixed into the pop and then we served it! The kids thought it was great!

It was such a nice day for late November that we played outside after the food and gifts were opened! This was very helpful because they were all ready to go when their parents arrived and I passed out the treat bags for them to take home!