I recently posted part 1 to my son’s Sonic the Hedgehog Birthday Party covering decorations, table set-up, food, snacks, goodies & party favors, as well as the CAKE! In case you missed it, you can find my Sonic the Hedgehog Birthday Party Part 1 here!
Today in Part 2 I’m going to cover what truly makes or breaks a children’s party:
GAMES & ACTIVITIES!
When hosting a children’s party if there’s one thing you need to know it’s this: At first the kids just really want to run around and get crazy!
Don’t get me wrong. After the energy has been burned they will settle down a bit and expect to be entertained. When creating my itinerary (yes, I do that – ha!) I plan accordingly. In most cases I allot the first hour for free-play. This allows the kids to engage with each other, but it also gives everyone time to show up without missing out on the organized games! Let’s face it. Not everyone is always on time and things come up that slow us down. That one hour has proven to be perfect every.single.party that I’ve hosted.
Free Play and Activities
During free play I have a few activities that the children can do at their leisure, but nothing that has a definite end time. Remember this cute little set-up from my Part 1 post? The Sonic placemats actually have little coloring activities on the back. Each child was given a small pack of crayons and were freely allowed to color if desired.
As part of their goodies each child received their own Sonic themed temporary tattoos (HUGE score with those!). The children would randomly pop over to the ‘tattoo station’ to get one, then run back off to join the chaotic fun!
By the end of the night, this was my tatted up sleep-over group. Yeah… I don’t think they liked it much.
Once free-play came winding down, it was onto the games. It was a bit challenging coming up with Sonic the Hedgehog games… in winter… but I managed to make it work.
Games
Sonic’s Hot Golden Ring (Played like hot potato)
Remember this little guy from post 1? I simply removed it off the wall and used it for the game. (I love it when I get multiple uses out of little projects!)
Frankly I was a little concerned this game may be a little boring for the boys, but I was dead WRONG! They had so much fun I literally think they could have played it all night!
Sonic’s Chaos Emerald Hunt
How the game works (we made this up so feel free to adjust however you’d like): I found some jewel images that I had printed and cut out, then hid around our living room. Each child was given their own little ‘bucket’ with their name printed on it. They were each assigned their own jewel color to collect (they had 7 jewels each. And btw, I’m SUPER happy I decided to run the game like this b/c it was very ‘fair’ and prevented bickering over who got more). Happy kids = happy mom!
After each jewel was collected they had to return to their bucket at the table to deliver it, then spin around as fast as they could 3 times (like Sonic), and then run off to find another jewel. My husband would intermittently pretend to be Dr. Robotnik and the little scavengers would try to avoid him in their hunt. The first person to collect all of their 7 jewels was the winner! This was a lot of fun and everyone loved looking for their emeralds!
An hour of free play and two games later, it was time to stuff our faces, sing & eat cake, then open presents. But don’t worry… the games weren’t over quite yet!
After we opened presents it was time to wind down for the night. We had a Sonic movie planned and were going to finish the party off with 2 more games after breakfast in the morning.
Sonic Movie Time
The next morning after breakfast we immediately got back to the games! (All the pajama pictures will be a dead give-a-way! HA!)
Sonic’s Balloon Smash
This game was so much fun! My husband had prepped the balloons the night before and had them stored away in large plastic bags. Before blowing them up I had printed off images of golden rings and Dr. Robotnik and cut each one out into little squares. I then folded them up tightly and my husband put each one in a balloon, then blew them up.
How the game works: All the kids got their own bucket (the same buckets we used from the Emerald Hunt) and were racing to smash the most balloons. Every time a balloon was smashed they were to collect each square piece of paper and put it into their bucket. Once all the balloons were smashed they sorted through their papers to count how many rings and how many Dr. Robotnik’s they had. For every Robotnik they had to lose one ring. The player with the most rings at the end won!
And last, but not least…
Sonic Piñata
According to my son, no party is complete without a piñata! I was SO excited when I saw that Birthday Express had one for purchase. Phew! What a great way to end the party, right?! Give them a sugar rush and send them home! HA! But in all seriousness, this was a lot of fun and a great way to end the sleep-over. The boys simply took their goodie boxes and filled them with all the goodies that busted out!
This was truly a fun Sonic birthday party! Everyone had a BLAST, and I can honestly say that mom did, too!
I hope you’ve gotten some great ideas to help you in your Sonic venture! And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thanks for joining in on our celebration!
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