Alien vs Astronaut -7yr- Green Lights

Alien vs Astronaut party 7 yr old  For my son's 7th birthday we hosted an alien vs astronauts party.

Invitations:  I made the invitations on my computer.  On the front was a picture of an astronaut and said "your mission should you choose to accept"  on the inside I wrote how they were requested to celebrate fellow astronaut's birthday and save the earth from an alien invasion.  For the info I used Mission date, lift off Time, space station for address and rsvp mother ship. 

Decorations:  Unfortunatly, the weather did not cooperate the day of the party, but my plan was to put a stuffed alien on our bay window overhang and a second one in our tree, instead they sat on the front porch to greet the guests.  Inside I just decorated our dining room.  I draped black fabric over the windows (one smaller window and one large bay window) with two layers of fabric and between the layers I put white Christmas lights to look like stars.  I hung a blow up alien from the smaller window and suspended with fishing line a space ship from the bay window. I had a large hover disc filled with helium that we suspended from the ceiling and strung glow in the dark stars that suspended with fishing line from the ceiling.

I changed out the light bulbs in my chandelier with green bulbs. The table was decorated with a space ship table cloth, silver plates and I used the cake as the centerpiece.  I also cut a cantoloupe in half and then put grapes and cantoloupe balls on sticks and put the fruit sticks in the turned upside down cantoloupe halves to look like hair, used marshmallows for eyes and used "martian head fruit kabobs" as table decorations.  Also found buzz lightyear bobbleheads that you inserted photo for the head and put an alien's face in one and my son's picture in the other and placed those on the table as well. 

Activities/Games As the weather was uncooperative, I had to modify a lot of the games for indoor use. Not an easy accomplishment with 12 7 year olds and a small cape cod style house As guests arrive they gathered in one of our spare bedrooms for a craft which was a sand art activity that I found at a large retail store.  Each pack contained four pictures of either an alien or spaceship.  It was similar to a paint by number, but instead you peeled off where there was a number which created a sticky surface that you then applied sand from the packets supplied with the kit.    We then moved to a larger family room for the rest of the games sequenced to match a real space mission.

Game 1 fuel up.  I cut carpet roll tubes into 18 inch sections.  Two teams and each child gets a tube.  Two buckets for each team one at front of line, which contained 10 tennis balls (fuel),and one at opposite end. Goal is to get tennis balls from bucket, pass through fuel lines (tubes), and in to bucket at end of line (tank) First team to fill tank wins.

Game 2 rocket launch.  Two large buckets and foam rocket launchers 3 per team.  Two teams each take turns launching rockets in to buckets first team to get 3 rockets in bucket wins

Game 3 asteroid field - had we played outside this would have been dodge ball inside I had three teams.  2 teams sat on floor across from each other and rolled balls back and forth (1 ball for every two kids).  Third team had to run through middle without getting hit by ball.

Game 4 moon rock toss.  Pair up kids each child gets a cup each pair gets a ball.  Start kids close together toss ball back and forth and have to catch ball in cup. If ball drops team sits.

Game 5 space walk - Run a maze made from curling ribbon with a ring attached to ribbon.  Two teams and have to move their ring along the ribbon as it weaved through two bedrooms under the bed, between bedposts, etc.  Had I practiced this game better before hand it would have worked a lot better.  I had two much slack in the ribbon(ribbon should be pulled taught) and some kids didn't get the idea, make it easier than what you think kid's can handle.

Game 6 aliens have landed - while kids were in other part of house doing the space walk I had another mom toss a bunch of plastic aliens that came in those plastic capsules I ordered from the web.  I then told kids the aliens had landed they each had to get 10

Game 7 pinata the pinata was actually a blimp but one of the passengers on the blimp was an alien.

Cake Time: After pinata we had cake, ice cream, chips, juice boxes and the fruit martian heads Every time the birthday rolls I round I tell myself "store bought cake", but my son gets a kick out of my "creations" as primitive as they may seem so here we go. I made two cakes. One was in the shape of the space shuttle which I found on the Nasa kid's website.  I made 2 9X13 cakes iced together, traced outline of space shuttle on and cut. Put sugar cones for the boosters and put candles in between so looked like boosters were firing up when sang happy birthday.  I also put little astronauts around space shuttle. 

For the second cake I made a space ship.  I used 1 box mix and put in glass casserole dish and saved out enough for one cup cake size to put on top.  I iced the cake gray, used cut up fruit rolls for the windows, gumballs for lights, and kit kat sticks for the legs and a kit kat bar turned upside down for the entrance to the space ship then put plastic aliens next to the space ship.  Both rocket and space ship were facing each other on large cutting board to look like aliens battling the astronauts. 

Goodie Bags: each kid got their craft, the pinata candy, a ball from our asteroid game, and the plastic aliens.  I love the theme things and you can go nuts finding all sorts of "themed" things to put in the goody bag, but I was fortunate the local chain drugstore in our area had reduced Summer toys 75% and I was able to gather up twelve hover discs at a very reasonable price for the parting gift.  I also created on the computer an alien cryptogram for the kids to take home.  I told them the aliens were trying to communicate a message and to figure out the message they had to solve the puzzle.  When they figured it out they were to call back and give the birthday boy the message.  The answer "happy birthday earthling!"