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!

N2's Lego Party Part 1

This year I thought we might need to have 2 birthday parties with friends because they each wanted a different theme and different friends.  But after taking a look at their lists we decided we could have one larger friends party.  I really wanted to do the same theme if we were doing 1 party so I convinced them that a Lego party would be fun.  Luckily they agreed with me.  I'm not sure how much longer I can convince them that my ideas are good ideas!  Since our friends' party was going to be bigger, we decided to have a family party a different weekend and play all the same games with the cousins rather than invite the cousins to the friends' party.  I think it worked out well.  I was able to try out all the games/activities with having lots of adults there to help out if need be and I could figure out how much time things would take.  This post will have all the set up beforehand pictures.

Invitations
In making the invitations I just used regular cardstock and punched circles out (they were less than 1 inch) and attached them to the front with foam tape to make them stand up a little.  I printed the inside on white using red, yellow, green and blue writing.  I actually had a hard time with the blue and green cardstock.  Believe it or not I did not have these colors in my stash.  I did end up finding some textured cardstock to use.

Decorations
Decorations were easy because I just used cardstock pieces with circles and foam tape to represent Lego blocks.  I bought a circle punch for this-it was a one inch size.  I also bought some blue and green cardstock so I had primary colors.  I set up a banner on our front closet, lego pieces on the stairs and pieces hanging from our light fixture in the dining room.

I also made a Lego minifigure head out of a pretzel container from Costco.  I spray painted it yellow (perhaps I should have done this when the weather was nicer-my paint puckered when I tried to fix up some spots.  I had the paint nice and smooth but I missed a spot so I decided to go over those areas a different day and it was too cold).  I used a black foam sticker sheet to cut out the face.  The Lego figure had a dress up hat on him when I took the picture.  I think it's cute!

I just used solid colored plates and napkins in the same colors as the Legos-blue, red, yellow and green.  I was going to wrap juice boxes with cardstock and put circles on them to make them look like a Lego brick with 2 studs but Brian bought Capri Sun instead of juice boxes.  One less thing for me to do.

For the door decoration, I made a 6 out of Legos on one of their flat Lego mats and hung it with ribbon on the door.

Favors
I bought a small gift bag set at Michaels and used the circle punch to add studs to the bags.  Inside the goody bag I made lego shaped crayons using a mold that my sister-in-law Lisa had.  I also used candy melts and another mold that Lisa had to make Lego candy.  I made Lego heart necklaces for the girls (Natalie LOVES wearing hers) and Lego magnets for the boys.  We also had N2 design cars with various Lego pieces and then we purchased the pieces from Bricklink and made up Lego kits for all the kids.  We used those Lego pieces during the party.  I downloaded the Lego font and printed up tags for the candy, crayons and cars on labels and stuck them to bags.  I also printed up directions for making each of N2's cars and included those in the goody bags.

I have a suggestion for making the car kits.  Don't let your kids design the car first and then go searching for pieces.  That's what we did.  I took a whole day trying to find those pieces on Bricklink and trying to get them the cheapest I could. Then once I got the orders I had to count to make sure they were correct (which the majority were not) and contact the seller to get the order fixed.  Then I had to sort them out into bags.  If you aren't familiar with Bricklink, individual sellers post their items and you can search for pieces.  Since they are all individual sellers, you have to pay shipping to each seller.  I ended up ordering from about 6-7 different sellers so I had to pay shipping charges 6-7 times.

What I would suggest is go to a Lego store, if you have one by you, take a look at what they have in terms of pieces.  Buy however many (I made 14 sets) of each piece that you think is interesting.  You have to buy a cup of Legos-you can't just buy individual pieces but I am going to assume that you will have plenty of Legos to fill up a cup.  You may need more than one cup.

If you don't have a Lego store near you or you can't find wheels or other parts you want at the Lego store, go to Bricklink and search for a piece or two that you are interested in having in your kit.  Make sure that ONE seller has all of that one piece that you need (so if you need 14 sets, make sure that one seller has 14 of that one item).  Then search that seller's store for other pieces that you can use for the car kit and that they have the right number of in stock.  You may not get them the cheapest but it will be the easiest!  I would probably start with the wheels and hubs.  Not all sellers have wheels and hubs but most sellers have bricks and plates.  You may need to order from more than one seller.  But just buy what they have in stock.  If they don't have the right number of pieces, then find a different piece to use.  Then have your child create the car.  I think that way would be MUCH easier than the way I did it!

Food
For N2's family party we didn't do any food that related to Legos.  We just served Mexican food-quesadillas, tacos, beans, corn, fresh veggies and fresh fruit because that is what N2 love the most.  For their friends' party we had pizza from Costco.  I put on pepperoni and had Brian slice the pizza to look like a Lego brick with 2 studs.  Most kids picked it off but whatever it was fun!  Since I didn't get to do my juice boxes to look like Legos, I wanted the pizza to look like Legos!

I made cupcakes for N2's friends' party and decorated them with the Lego candy I made but cut them in half.

For the family party I made a Lego cake.  I made a 9x13 inch cake and cut it into thirds.  I cut one of the thirds in half.  I iced each piece a different color (I tried to make red but the gel color I use never turns out red-it turns out pink so I added some blue and I added too much blue so I kept adding red but all I got was maroon).  I used marshmallows cut in half to make the studs.  I frosted the cake first and then added the marshmallows and frosted over top those.  I'm not sure if that was the way to go but I couldn't figure out how to frost the marshmallows first.

Cousin Sleepover

The night before N2's family birthday party, we invited Amelia and Megan to sleep over at our house.  Marcie and Ben came down and visited with us a short while before leaving to stay at Mom and Dad's house with Nathaniel.  Mom and Dad watched Nathaniel so they could go out on Valentine's Day.  We had a great time with Amelia and Megan!  We had cleaned up the house for the party so we had to limit what the kids played with.  They played quite a bit with dress up clothes and had parades around the house.  Alas I did not get any pictures of this.  Megan liked to play with Playmobil in Noah's room.  We told them they could watch a movie before it was bedtime.  Our intention was to put them to bed early so they could stay up a talk for a while but they didn't get to bed too early.  They decided they wanted to watch The Lego Movie since we were having a Lego party the next day.  Here they are watching at the beginning. Everyone wanted to sit by Amelia.

We had them eat dinner while watching the movie.  We served cheese pizza and they ate A LOT!  They were very intent on watching the movie while eating.

The end of the movie was kind of scary for Amelia and Megan.  Amelia choose to cuddle with Natalie and a bear.  Megan cuddled with Brian when it got scary.  Noah decided to join them.

After the movie we had the kids put on pjs and then read books.  Amelia and Megan bought N2 a very funny book for their birthday which they allowed N2 to open that night.  We had read The Book with No Pictures from the library and N2 just loved it.  Amelia and Megan really enjoy the book too so they bought it for N2 after hearing that N2 wanted it for their birthday.  Brian reads this book really well.  Here are all the kids enjoying the book.

After the book it was bedtime.  We had all the kids in sleeping bags in Natalie's room.  We told them they could talk until 8:00 pm but that they hadn't to stay in their sleeping bags.  We went up when we heard lots of moving around and they had all reconfigured where they were sleeping.  At 8 we went up to tell them they had to be quiet.  We had to go up again about 20 minutes later or so because they were still talking and moving around.  I think Megan was asleep by this point but the older kids were not.  We went up again around 9 and Noah may have been asleep.  Natalie moved to her bed and that was the last time we had to go up.  So it was definitely a success!  They were up by 6 am because someone got up to use the bathroom.  I went in at 6 to tell them to quiet down.  Brian went in a little later and sat there to make sure everyone stayed quiet for a little while longer.  The kids were tired later in the day but not too tired and they definitely enjoyed having a sleepover.  They want to do it again and we would be more than happy to have Amelia and Megan stay over again!

Valentine's Day

N2 had their Valentine's Day party at school on Wednesday.  I had planned their valentine cards a while back but just hadn't taken the pictures off my camera.  I tried to convince them to just do cards for their friends but they wanted nothing to do with that.  Noah chose a space them of course and Natalie chose horses (another of course).  Noah's were a little bit of a pain to make because they all had to be hand cut and hand written.

Their teacher sent home a heart for us to decorate and then send back.  I think she just wanted some decoration in her classroom.  I'm tired of N2 making collages so we decided to paint with marbles.  I like this kind of painting because it's not messy!  It didn't last too long though but that is OK because I wasn't looking for something time consuming.  Maybe if they had each just painted with one marble it would have occupied them for a while longer.

 I didn't cut the heart out first and that was a mistake because I couldn't tell where the lines were for the most part after they had painted.