Magic Tree Party -5yr- Tree House Adventures

My son was turning five and had a wide array of ideas for themes for his birthday party. So, to accommodate the smorgasboard of party ideas, we picked the Magic Tree House theme, based on the book series, which is his favorite bedtime read. We used the adventures for the book theme to incorporate all his ideas. It was fantastic! 

For invitations: I made a postcard on the computer replicating the front cover of the Magic Tree House books. I listed the Title as Magic Tree House #5, James's Birthday Adventures in the Afternoon. The other side of the invite was a scroll with the when, where, and time information. We asked each guest to bring their school back pack to help with holding the treasures they would find on their adventures and to dress for the weather.  With 37 possible books to pick themes from, my son and I sat down and picked out his favorite ones and we built the party around that. There is a wide variety of choices for each child, but here is what we did.

After the guests arrived, we gathered them around and explained the concept of the Magic Tree House books, the charaters, and the adventures they go on. We handed each boy a pencil and notepad to put in his backpack, just like Jack in the books. Then we took off to the woods to start our adventures. Now, we were lucky to have a neighbor with a grand wooden fort hidden in the woods behind our house. So, the boys were overjoyed to see it and eagerly climbed in. Once in, we handed James, the Magic Tree House book I had made from cardboard. It had the Magic Tree House book theme on the front, the same one as on the invitation and then had a brown paper lunch bag glued to the inside. Written on it was: Find the adventure inside. Each time the boys went to the treehouse, they were given this book with a new card inside the bag for each place they were to visit. James would point to the book and say I want to go here" and then open the book and retrieve their adventure card. Each card had a graphic and name of where they were to go. We had 8 adventures total (for the party we only used 6 due to time restraints)and a matching card glued to a popsicle stick and placed somewhere in our yard. 

#1 Dinosaurs: we had a dinosaur egg nest at the bottom of our swing set (a group of blown up balloons) and told the boys they had to pop them to retrieve their treasure. There were dinosaur stickers inside each one. 

#2 Egypt: the boys found an adventure card with a pyramid on it. They found a matching card on a stick in the back yard next to a bunch of toilet paper. They had to wrap each other up as mummies take a group photo and then collect their Egyptian treasure a ring pop.

#3 Pirates: the boys found an adventure card with the Jolly Roger on it. They found the matching card next to our sandbox (conveniently a treasure chest sandbox) and proceeded to dig for their treasure chocolate gold coins and then got in line to receive their authentic pirate tatoo.

#4 Wild West: the boys found a cowboy picture and headed back to the sandbox which had been converted to have the boys pan for silver. We had a bunch of pie tins with holes in them and had burried rocks painted silver for them to find. 

#5 Olympics: the boys found an adventure card with the olympic rings and found an obstacle course in the front yard. They hit a baseball off a tee kicked a soccer ball into a net shot a basket and ran to the finish line to receive a plastic gold medal.

#6 Hawaii: the boys found a hula dancer on their adventure card and promptly found the matching card to do the limbo in the back yard. After completing this adventure they received a leigh. 

#7 American Revolution: the children found an american flag and then found their adventure to be completeing a red white and blue star bookmark (this offered a craft and kept with the theme around books)

#8 Moon: I had found a new year's pinata cheep which was shaped of a siver ball. I just redecorated it to look like the moon and voila we had ourselves our last adventure which ended in a huge bang! I filled it with candy treasure and had the boys wear my son's old halloween costume's astronaut helmet while taking turns bringing down the moon.  

Since I did a lot of prep for this party and had only an hour and a half of party time we kept the food simple. Just cake and koolaid. However my father constructed a wooden tree about 12"high. He put two pieces of wood cross-sectioned together and affixed a shelf on one side. I painted it to look like a tree and then set the wooden tree in a 9x13 cake which was iced green and sprinkled with green sugar sprinkles. I then baked another cake and put a piece on the shelf and iced it brown to make it look like a tree house. Brown sprinkles on the top and chocolate squares for windows completed the look. I also added a rope ladder which was hot glued to the the bottom of the wooden shelf. It made a tasty edible treehouse treat.

For the guests upon their departure they had their backpacks full of their treasures from their adventures plus we gave them each a Magic Tree House book which we picked up cheap at Half Price Bookstore and a booklet of games we downloaded from the Magic Tree House website through Scholastic Books.  This themed party is also gender friendly has my two daughters also participated playing the role of Jack's sister Annie. And for those of you who have allergy concerns we had a child with peanut allergies and all of the above activities accomodated his special needs and didn't exclude him from anything.

This party is garenteed to run you and your guest exhausted by the end. But is was a wonderful hour and a half of exploration and fun. In the end all the kids couldn't wait to read their books and tell their parents about all the places they had visited.   "