Corbin's Construction Party

Because I love to do parties, and birthdays are such a fun event, I told the kids they could have a big friends party every four years.  Truth be told, it started with Audrey when she turned four and I went all out.  I was exhausted and decided I couldn't do that every year for every child.  I decided to make them momentous events...Age 4 or 5, 8, 12, and 16.  Now if you asked the kids, they would be happy going to Chuck E. Cheese EVERY YEAR!!!  So I figure the party deal is a win-win. I can only handle so much of the mouse.

I didn't even go all out...we bought the invitations and did minimal effort on the decor.  (Ah-hah, I am learning to simplify!)  We even combined parties with his friend across the street, Will Heaps.  They were both turning 5 and have birthdays 5 days apart with practically the same friends.  We opted for a Construction Theme.

For the intro activity as everyone arrived, we had them decorate their yellow hard hats and tool belts (little nail Aprons from Home Depot.)  They each got their own construction pencil and then went to work in the construction zone (set-up and mess was in the garage.)  At Home Depot I had them cut a bunch of scrap pieces of wood, bought some glue, sandpaper, and had some twine, tools, tape measures, popsicle sticks, and pen paints.  The dads supervised any hammering with nails.  Apparently Will loves to build on a daily basis and has his own stockpile of wood and his very own bottle of glue.  That's where I got the idea for the construction zone.  The boys loved creating and building masterpieces and it took 45 minutes!  They would have gone longer had we not convinced them to play games.

My friend Diane (Will's Mom) had creatively come up with some construction games...toss the bean bag in the back of the dump truck (self-explanatory), Wrecking Ball (Stack a bunch of boxes and number them, hang a tennis ball over the banister and let the kids try and knock the boxes down in order), and then Construction Bingo that she made on the computer.  We also bought a game - Pin the stop sign on the Construction Zone.  :)  Other fun ones that we had in our back pockets as time fillers...Dump Truck Relay (Race filling up dump truck with rocks or dirt and running across yard and dumping them in a bucket, and Tower Building (who can build the highest tower with blocks.)

We fed the kids lunch and then sang Happy Birthday and served Dirt Cupcakes with these cute hard-hat picks. I found a great party website...way better prices than Oriental Trading and fast shipping! (birthdaydirect.com)  For cupcakes we used Girl Scout Thin Mints (it is that season you know) and crushed them to sprinkle on top.  We gave out cute construction sign goodie bags with random treats and truck stickers.  Plus they got to take home their hats, belts, and wood creations!  

Corbin had a good time.  Yeah!!!  And so did I.  Wasn't too hard or expensive. Of course, it was nice that some parents stayed and helped, and the party was at Will's house - that definitely cuts down the energy expenditure on my part!  Now it's time to think of Audrey's #8 coming up this summer.  Yikes, are we already there?