My son had been asking for a
Skylanders themed birthday party for months. I scoured the web
searching for help and found very little that would work for his party.
I did find great portal of power cake photos and many House Party
links. I knew the kids weren't going to play any video games during the
party so a video game tournament wasn't an option. I did end up using
an idea from a post that suggested having an activity based around each
of the 8 elements. (found here http://www.wired.com/geekmom/2012/04/birthday-week-conquer-kaos-with-a-skylanders-birthday-party/)
Passport: We had a "Welcome to Skylands" pennant banner hanging in
the backyard. Each child was handed a "Passport" when they arrived. We provided pens and a table for the kids to fill in their name and character name. On the back of the passport was a list of all the character names but kids were also encouraged to make up their own.
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| Passport Front The children were encouraged to select a Skylanders character name or choose their own. |
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| Passport Inside (with location for stamps adjacent to element image) |
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| Passport Back (with all characters for reference) |
Stamps: I
created stamps of the elements by cutting foam and adhering it to wood
blocks. Be sure that you
adhere the reverse image so it stamps correctly. We used
these to stamp each "Passport" after the child completed the associated
activity.
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| Stamps (top) |
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Stamps (cut foam adhered to wooden blocks) |
Life: We had a table set up with printed out portal of power papers for the children to cut and tape. These were downloaded from here: http://cdn.skylanders.com/web/prod/blog/Portal_Papercraft.pdf
Fortunately, we had an adult assisting at this table. While the task is about the right level for seven year olds, it was great to have someone helping. We also had packets of crayola model magic for the kids to make their own character to put on their paper portal or power. This did not seem to be a popular activity, though.
Earth: I made a batch of rocks with treasures inside. I used this recipe: http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/miscstpatricks/a/bltrstone.htm I placed a nickel inside each "rock." I later drew an element on the bottom of each one so that they were sure what they found was a "magic" rock. You could easily draw a star or a colored dot, just something to easily identify them. My husband hid these around the garden in an area marked by flags (so we could limit the area that was trampled.)
Magic: After each kid found a "rock," we explained that they were magic and that they should crack them open to find something special inside. They seemed pretty happy to find the coin. They each received the earth stamp for finding the special rock and the magic stamp for finding the coin inside.
Water: My husband filled a large plastic bin with water and the kids tried to guess whether an object would sink or float. They passed each object around prior to the birthday boy immersing it. There were definitely some surprises.
Fire: I thought it would be fun for the kids to have sparklers but we agreed that it was too risky and not great for a midday event. We ended up having tall sparkler candles on the cake for the fire element.
Tech: My husband set up a photo "booth." He secured his camera on a tripod and handed each child the remote so he or she could take a self portrait. The children had a choice of backgrounds that included different characters that I painted on large pieces of cardboard. (I picked up the cardboard for free from Costco by the compactor.) We printed the photo to mail in the envelope with the thank you card.
Air: We had plastic slingshots (left over from last year's angry birds party) so we set out a bucket of marshmallows and mounted a target for the kids to shoot.
Decorations: The kids were able to pick out a button to pin to their shirt with an image of an element of their choice. Using a decorative paper punch, I punched out a bunch of elements that I taped on many things including food platters, plastic cups and party hats. We also had a portal of power large enough for one or two kids to stand on. I used a heavy duty cardboard watermelon container (also free from Costco) and painted it. I placed a table under it so it would be sturdy enough to hold the weight of the kids.
I placed large printouts of the elements around the yard near the station where the activity would occur.
I had many painted posters of different characters.
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| Stealth Elf Painting |
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| Sunburn Painting |
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| Wrecking Ball Painting |
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| Camo Painting |
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| Cynder Painting |
I also painted one character and cut the face out for the kids (and adults) to put their own face in.
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| Stump Smash - Face in Hole |
Additional Activities: We had extra time after all the planned activities so we did an impromptu version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with an element and a character. The kids also happily played tag and two square.
Goody Bag: Each child selected a new playground ball in a color of their choice in lieu of a goody bag.
Invitations: The invitation was done in photoshop. It had the skylanders logo at the top with the name changed from Spyro to my son's name. I also added birthday hats to the characters. I had an image showing his stats but I changed all the numbers to be "7." The bottom was a screen shot of the portal of power from the website and I put a photo of my son as if he was standing on it. I grabbed the scroll, also from the skylanders website and put the pertinent party info on it.
Food: We had watermelon (my son informed me that one of the characters turns into watermelon,) pizza, fruit salad, and green salad as well as strawberries, chips, veggies, dried mango and craisins to munch on.
Birthday Cake: I purchased a vanilla sheet cake but I also baked a cake so that I could customize the store bought cake with a portal of power on top. The cake I made was a dense, flourless chocolate cake (my son's favorite.) I cut around a glass to create a smaller circle of cake. I covered it with marzipan that I had colored to look like the portal of power. We set some of his actual characters on the cake, too. I ended up with a ring shaped chocolate cake that I covered with a chocolate glaze so the remainder of my cake would not go to waste. The home baked chocolate cake proved much more popular than the heavily frosted store bought cake.
