I was talking to my sister before I planned the buddy's birthday party and she told me how she'd invited 5 boys to her son's party and 3 of them ended up not being able to come and so his party involved 3 boys. She was a little disappointed. So I figured, heck, we'll invite 9 kids, that way when half of them can't come, we'll still have a party! And then of course, as luck would have it, all 9 of them (plus a few siblings) were able to come. Another stroke of luck came when Caleb snuck up behind me while I was perusing ideas online for the party and saw some pictures of "creature power vests" because we were having a Wild's Kratt's Party--from the show on pbskids about animals. Anyway, he got super excited thinking he was going to have creature power vests at HIS party. So then of course I couldn't say no . . . to making 12 creature power vests. I didn't show pictures of how to make the vests because there are lots of tutorials. See
here. or
here. I just used black fleece for the vest, colored fleece for the accents and velcro. I hot glued all the colored parts and the velcro on. I sewed the sides of the vest shut.
Yep. It was definitely a partay. I gathered most of my ideas from online, and I have to say
pinterest is definitely my friend :) Here's how it went down: I designed an invite because really is there any good Wild Kratt's paraphernalia online. Nope.
Then I got gathering ideas and making stuff. . . which kind of snowballed into a lot of stuff (note to self: don't start planning early because then you just keep adding to your ideas).
I ended up with 10 creature power discs, which "activate" the creature power suits. On the show the 2 Kratt brothers have creature power suits--including a vest with a circle in the middle. They get these circular discs with an animal on them and put them into the circle and then their suit turns into whatever animal is on the disc. (Yeah, I know that didn't make sense).
* get the CREATURE POWER DISCS PDF HERE. (I modified some I found online to fit the activities we wanted to do--if you want the original jpegs they should be linked through the pinterest link). I turned these into pdfs so I could make sure they were all able to be hole punched with my 3.5 inch hole punch--I had 100 to cut out and I wanted to make it easy on myself :)
Print on cardstock, punch with 3.5 inch hole punch or cut out with scissors, glue small piece of velcro to back.
We just had too many activities we wanted to do--so 6 of the discs we turned into an activity to "use" the disc and the other 4 went into their favor bags to take home. We started off giving them their beaver discs so they could turn into beavers and make beaver dams out of peanut butter and pretzels. In theory it was suppose to take a long time and be an opener while everyone arrived. But somehow everyone seemed to arrive within like a 5 minute window. So they all made their "dams" together.
Next up we took them outside and gave them their Cheetah Discs to turn into cheetah's and race around the yard. A little anticlimactic, but the buddy enjoyed it. Because we had so many kids we split them in half and rotated through the rest of the activities.
For the Buttefly creature power disc I gave them each their disc and then they wrapped each other up in toilet paper like a cocoon and then "burst" free to become a butterfly. Simple, but fun.
For the polar bear disc I froze 4 gallon size bags of water flat in the freezer and then we pulled them out and put them on the grass. They had to step from "ice floe" to "ice floe" without slipping off. (but I don't think we managed pictures of this one before they were done--they went fast).
For the shark disc we had a little blow up pool that they fished for little plastic fishes. By far the favorite, and the one thing the buddy requested we do.
The platypus disc was a simple carrying a boiled egg on a spoon to the nest game. Not the highlight, butsome of the kids thought it was pretty great.
* get the ANIMAL OUTLINE POSTER PDF'S HERE. Print the first 3 pages on simple patterned scrapbook paper/cardstock and then cut out each animal leaving black outline. Print last 5 pages on colored cardstock. Glue animals above words.
And of course we had to end with cake and ice cream (or ice cream sandwiches).
*Get generic WILD KRATT TOPPERS PDF HERE. Print on cardstock and punch out with a 2 inch hole punch. (they don't say Caleb on them).
I also ended up making a little pouch for each child with a velcro closure and a band on the back so that as they collected each disc they could put the previous one in the pouch so it didn't get lost. In retrospect it was kind of a lot of work, and it may have been faster and more organized if they'd just given me back each disc as we moved on--and then I could have divided them out again at the end to send them home.
Their favor bags included the last 4 creature power discs with a little favor and fun fact to go along with each one:
* get the FAVOR TAGS PDF HERE. Print on cardstock and cut out with 2 inch hole punch.
* get the FUN FACTS PRINTABLE PDF HERE.
The Firefly included a glow stick bracelet.
The Earthworm had a little toy worm and some gummy worms.
The bat included some "bat ears" made from black elastic and black fleece left over from the vests.
The large mouth bass included some gold fish.
The buddy had a good time. He still occasionally puts on his creature power vest and runs around the house. And even when he doesn't have his vest on he'll say "cheetah power" and that means he's running "super" fast. It ended up being quite a bit of work, but I kind of brought in on myself. I get started and the ideas just keep coming and I want to do them all and so I do. I enjoy it though so I guess it's okay. I just hope it doesn't get out of control (probably too late for that one eh?)
