Enchanted Forest 8yr - Enchanted Adventure

When I asked my 8 year old daughter what did she wanted to do for her birthday, she gave me a perfect fantasy quest answer: I want somebody to look for something in an enchanted forest. So I came up with the following story which we described in our party invitations.

Once upon a time, there was an enchanted forest where all kinds of good creatures lived happily: fairies, elves, trees guards, etc. But the most important of them all was a unicorn it's his magic that made the forest enchanted. One day an evil wizard arrived at the forest. He captured the unicorn, locked it in a cave and placed a huge dragon at the entrance to guard it. The servants of the wizard crept into the forest. Our goal is to help the good creatures fight against the evil creatures and release the unicorn.    

Decorations: We decided to have the party in a park with lots of space and wood atmosphere. I painted a large unicorn and a dragon and we attached the pictures to a tree; the picture of the dragon covered the picture of the unicorn. I printed a lot of pictures from the Internet of other good and evil creatures. We also attached these pictures to the trees. Each picture marked a quest station, so every part of the story was illustrated. To enter the party location the guests had to pass between two trees with Welcome to the Enchanted Forest picture. 

Games:
1. Our first station was a wise owl. The owl told us again the story of the unicorn and the wizard and explained that we can't fight evil without a weapon, so we have to ask the dwarves to make the special weapons for us.

2. The dwarves were ready to help but the swamp monsters stole their instruments. We went to the swamp. The fathers were the swamp monsters, I made green bandanas for them. We played the pull rope game all the kids against the fathers. We pulled the monsters from their swamp, they lost their power and returned the instruments to the dwarves. The dwarves gave us axes and shields cut from silver bristol paper. Now we had to bewitch our weapons.

3. We went to the flower fairies and asked them to give us their magic powder. The fairies were ready to help, but first we had to help them water the flowers. An evil water spirit lived in a lake and he sent an army of poisonous fish against us. I hung several paper fish on a rope between two trees. The kids had to shoot them with a water gun. The kids did it one by one and I removed one fish after each turn. When the kids finished shooting all the fish, the flower fairies gave us their magic powder for the shields. I gave the kids small pictures of the unicorn and the colors and they decorated their shields. 

4. Next we had to get the magic crystals to strengthen the axes. The air spirits had the crystals and were ready to help, but they kept the crystals in their air castle and the air bridge to the castle was broken. We had to rebuild it. Here we played the following game: I put several cotton balls on one plate, each kid closed his eyes and had to pick up one cotton ball with a spoon and move it to another plate. The catch is that you can't feel whether you have anything on the spoon. We got the magic crystals (colorful stickers) and decorated the axes.

5. Next we had to get a special light to shine the dark places. We asked the elves to give us the star light. They were ready to help, but their special phials for star light were broken. I printed several pictures of the beautiful bottles from the Internet and cut them into puzzles. The kids were divided into pairs and had to solve the puzzles. I gave them small stars that glow in the dark as a prize.

6. Now we went to the tree guards to ask for the magic potion for strength. They were ready to help, but the trolls were cutting their trees and burning them. I hid a lot of small pictures of the trolls between the bushes and gave the kids tiny pocket lights. They had to look for the trolls and to shine their lights on them. I told the kids that the trolls are afraid of light. Then we got the magic potion (soft drinks) from the trees guards and took a break to eat and drink. The kids had some rest and were ready to continue with our adventure.

7. We had to cross the river with huge river monsters. We met a sad Pegasus near the river. He agreed to help us get to the other side of the river by air, but we first had to help him gather his foals. The foals were balloons and the kids had to move the balloons through an obstacle course.

8. On the other side of the river, we entered the woods with giant spiders and got entangled in the spiders webs. We played a game where the kids were indeed entangled and had to free themselves. This game was such a hit that we played it 7 times instead of one time as I planned.

9. Our next station was frightening Cerberus which didn't let us pass. We met several fauns and they advised us to play music to make Cerberus sleep. The kids had to invent different musical instruments from the objects they could find in the park. We had a great orchestra, I was amazed at their creativity.

10. We passed Cerberus and finally got to the wizard castle. My husband was the evil wizard. He had an inner eye to see his enemies, so he had to catch the kids with closed eyes. The kids loved it, they tried to hit him with their axes (the bristol paper is soft enough, so nobody got hurt). They finally fought the wizard down to the ground and the road to the dragon cave was free.

11. We played bow and arrow and each kid had to hit the dragon picture. When the last kid did it, I removed the picture of the dragon and we all saw the beautiful unicorn.     The unicorn gave us his prize a cake. I covered the cake with violet sugarpaste and  put a sugarpaste unicorn on top. The cake was decorated with violet, pink and golden flowers and I painted the unicorn's mane, tail and horn silver. In addition to the prizes that I gave to the kids during the games, they also got the party bags with shining pencils, sweets, beautiful shining candles, small organza bags with dry flowers and a bottle of fairy dust for the face.

They all loved the party and didn't want to go home!