N2's Lego Party Part 2

Activities/Games
-decorating Lego minifigures
-Lego hot potato
-build a Lego tower
-spoon race
-Lego ski ball
-build and race your own car

Lego minifigure
The first thing we did at N2's party was decorate their own Lego minifigure.  I printed out a minifigure on yellow cardstock and cut them out.  I had markers, crayons, fun tape, googly eyes, and foam stickers that the kids could use to decorate their minifigures.  I figured this would be a good thing to have kids do while waiting for other kids to arrive.

The pictures of kids doing activities are going to be mixed between the family party and the friends' party.

Lego Hot Potato
We played a hot potato like game where we passed around a Lego creation and each kid had to add one piece and then pass it on.  When the music stopped that person was the winner.  I haven't played games where kids are out because then I don't know what to do with the kids once they are out.  I found that at N2's friend's party the kids weren't attentive for very long and would start playing with other things in the house which I didn't really want them to do.  So it's easier to play games where everyone can play at the same time.

Build a Lego tower
Brian and I had sorted through N2's Legos before the parties and pulled out the bricks that were square or rectangular 2x4 or more.  We didn't want any of the plates (the flat pieces) or the bricks that were only 1 thick.  We put those in the Lego minifigure head container.  For our next game the kids each needed their own pile of Legos.  Their job was to build a tower as tall as they could in 2 minutes.  The older kids really got the game and tried to make their towers tall, the younger kids just built.  The only rule was that the tower had to be able to stand on its own.

 (Noah, DJ, Dalton)

 (Natalie, Autumn, Chloe, Audrey)

 (Natalie, Audrey, Chloe)                                                          

My kids had a distinct advantage during their friends' party with this game because they knew what they needed to do to make the tallest tower.  After this game I had them see how fast they could take apart their tower.  The kids loved this but one girl scraped herself on a Lego and that led to tears until I got her a fun bandaid.  Sigh.

Spoon Race
One  game that we played during the family party but not the friends' party was the Lego spoon race.  We ran out of time to play it at the friends' party.  At the family party we divided the kids into 2 teams and gave them a spoon.  They had to take 1 Lego in the spoon down to a container, drop it in and go back to their teammate.  Then they passed the spoon to their teammate so their teammate could do the same thing.  If they dropped the Lego they were supposed to go back and get a new one.  They also were only supposed to hold the spoon by the end.  The older kids followed both those rule but the younger kids had a harder time keeping the Lego balanced so they held the spoon closer to where the Lego was.

 (Amelia took this game very seriously!  She tried to go as fast as she could but as carefully as she could!)

Lego Ski Ball
I made rings out of poster board in different sizes and then attached points to them.  The kids got 8 Legos to throw and try to get as many points as they could.  We played this game at the family party after opening presents so not many kids played because they were occupied with other things.  At the friends' party most of the kids played but I was surprised that some kids didn't want to play.

Build a race a car
I think the game the kids enjoyed the most was build your own race car.  We pulled out the kids from the kids' goody bags and they were able to make a car however they wanted to.  Once they were done with their cars they would race them.  They did not need to use all the pieces.  I was pretty surprised that some of the kids at N2's friends' party did not know how to build without directions and they couldn't figure out how to put the wheels on.  They had no idea how to start a car.  I wonder how many of them just build what the directions tell them to build.  Some of them got a little upset when their car would fall apart.  We had to help them put it back together.  At the family party the moms and dads helped the younger kids with their cars.  N2 wanted to follow the directions to make the car that they originally made so I pulled out directions for them.  This activity took the most time out of all the games.

I think Marcie built most of Abigail's car for her.  Abigail did love racing her car.  They set up their cars and then Brian lifted up the ramp to see how far the cars would go.  We had quite a few crashes!  The kids would stand at the other end of the hallway and cheer for their cars.  They wanted to race over and over and over again!

At N2's friends' party we played another game that I made up spur of the moment.  We had a little time between one of the games and lunch and I didn't to start the spoon game because we played that game in the hallway leading to the kitchen and I didn't want to get in the way of the oven since we were cooking pizzas.  In hindsight, I should have just played the spoon relay game elsewhere.  Oh well.  I had wanted to play a scavenger hunt game but I didn't have the lego bins set up right.  So I ended up dumping out all the of the bricks and told the kids to find a piece that was blue and had at least 4 studs.  I kept calling out different pieces and they had to build something using those pieces.  Everyone's buildings came out differently.  Most of the kids played this game as well.

 Yasmine                                                                    

I think both parties went really well. I think we had plenty of activities.  The kids at the family party were much more able to just build with Legos and were happy to have some free time to build however they wanted to build.  The kids at the friends' party did not seem to have the attention span for that nor the desire to do that so I had to keep the games going.  The 2 boys that came to the party were not very interested in playing the games that I had set up.  They instead wanted to play the piano.  Brian's mom came to help with the party and she talked to them quite a bit and tried to keep them occupied.  We did most of the games in the play area and that was perhaps not the best idea because the kids wanted to look at N2's toys but I kept them busy enough that they didn't have time to pull out toys.  They also wanted to see N2's rooms which I did not allow them to do either because we hadn't cleaned them.  Clearly we should have playdates with some of these kids!