Indiana Jones -5yr- Wardrobe Box Tunnels

 We had an AWESOME Indiana Jones party for my 5 year old son!  

INVITATIONS: I made them up on tan linen paper and designed them on print shop with the Indiana Jones header, a map and pyramid and skull and a picture of Indiana Jones...and I put my son's face as Indiana Jones' face.  I then burnt the edges and gave them that burnt, torn look  very cool. Each invitation had a secret code letter on it and they had to bring the invitation to the party.  Once they were all together, the secret code name was Indiana Jones".  They were sent in large manilla envelopes and the return label read "From the office of Indiana Jones (then my son's name".  Then I stamped "SECRET MESSAGE" around the envelope.  Because the invitation looked like a treasure map some of the parents told me that their kids carried it around for weeks using it to play Indiana Jones and pirate games.  I carried the same sort of idea with the thank you notes as well. 

DECORATIONS: It's hot and rainy here in Florida during the summer so we had it indoors.  I removed most of the furniture from the living room and built a huge walk in pyramid in one corner of the room and there were tunnels around the perimeter of the whole room for them to crawl in to get to the pyramid.   Inside the pyramid were scary decorations of spider webs snakes monkeys spiders tiki torches etc. and I put two good sized plastic bins filled with playing sand and treasure using plastic necklaces earrings red green & clear stones from the craft store as gems plus gold coins.  The tunnels were made with wardrobe boxes and then covered with black plastic and I took red plastic table covers and cut out "fire" and put that along the bottom half. There were also snakes and spiders all over them and on the inside of the tunnels there was ancient writings and spider webs.  

My walls were covered with scene setters that looked like ancient walls & dungens and had tiki torches and palm trees all around. Along with skulls and bones!  The table in the room was covered with the Indiana Jones table cloth from the party store and I had ordered a skull that lit up and changed colors that was in the center on a gold plastic plate that had the gems and necklaces and snakes and spiders on it. There was treasure and bugs & snakes spread all over the table along with Indiana Jones M&M's and Hershey's gold nugget chocolates on plastic silver plates that I found at the dollar store.   I had silk trees in the room with clear Christmas lights on them and shiny plastic necklaces hanging in the tree....with blow up monkeys! I darkened the entire room with black plastic table covers on the sliders and windows.  We also had the 6 blow up totem poles in the room. I put up Indiana Jones posters and had about 100 black balloons all over the floor.  

Indiana Jones movies were playing on the TV and on mute while the soundtrack CD played the music.   For the entrance to the room I took gray plastic table covers and used black & white paint to paint bricks on them to look more like a dungen and hung them over fishing line that was secured with hooks. I ordered some scene setter props that are plastic that you cut out that look like dungen doors torches etc. and put those on there as well so it looked like they were walking into a tomb. Their eyes lit up when they walked into this huge room filled with all of the Indiana Jones things!   I had battery operated candles that I found at Target on the table with the lit skull and the Christmas lights on the tress and around the room so it had an eery feel to it with spider webs everywhere as well.  

ACTIVITIES: As everyone was getting there and to get the party started I ordered these white 12" cardboard like paper pyramids and everyone colored and decorated their own pyramid with stickers etc. that they got to take home.    

GAMES: One of the games was that they climbed through the tunnels two at a time with their flash lights in hand and goodie bags and dug for treasure in the sand pits inside the pyramid.  They came out of the pyramid through another tunnel at the other end and before they were done they went inside of a blow up pool filled with foam peanuts and there were special coins at the bottom of the pool and they had to find one. They did the toilet paper mummy game and a ring toss game where I took 10 two liter bottles and painted them with black paint and printed out skull pictures and glued them on and put snakes on them and bought plastic rings for them to toss over them and put points to each row to see who won. 

COSTUMES: Some kids dressed up in Indiana Jones type of clothing and I handed out paper Indiana Jones hats for everyone and the boys received foam swords like Mutt instead of whips and guns and the girls wore fancy jewels and light up tiaras. 

CAKE: I made the cake myself and did a stacked pyramid it was awesome! I used chocolate cake and used 4 boxes using a square cake pan and a loaf pan to make the different layers.  Once they're baked I put them in the freezer so that they were easy to shape and cut.  I used a butter cream icing and just added some Hershey's cocoa to darken it a little and then used graham cracker crumbs to make it look like there was sand on it.  I then used the little leaves of strawberries to put around the pyramid to look like there were plants growing on it.  I used an Indiana Jones figure on the top and put gummy spiders and a plastic snake on it.  I also had some plastic palm trees that I put on the bottom corners.  It was the coolest cake!  I found some "coconut" cups with lids that the kids used to drink out of with straws and used a gold marker to put their names on them. 

FAVORS: Everyone had their Indiana Jones goodie bags filled with "treasure" to take home.  In addition they had the pyramids that they made the hat jewels sword the coconut cup and Indiana Jones coloring books.  The party lasted a perfect 2 hours and everyone had a fantastic time.  Towards the end they got to have a free play time through the tunnels and dug up the rest of the treasure in the sand pits.  They had a blast in the blow up pool filled with styrofoam peanuts and had it been outside I would have just put sand in it or little water balloons!  A terrific party that was LOTS of fun!    "