Indiana Jones Party -6yr- Blow Dart Game

This Indiana Jones Party was for my 6yr old son.   

INVITATIONS: I ordered a party theme pack that included invites, plates, etc. and just used those.   

DECORATIONS: A skull in the center of the lunch table. It was an outdoor party so I felt none were needed inside.   

ACTIVITIES: When the children arrived, I had an IJ movie playing downstairs, and IJ music as well. My son handed out homemade 'whips', made from brown door insulation and electrical taped handles. Then, since it was a lunchtime party, they ate tacos and fruit punch, my son's choice I would have chosen the whole 'gross food' idea, but my son wasn't keen on it. After, I opened the door to the backyard, and they were very surprised to see that I had built a 7 foot tall wooden frame to swing on a rope, like Indy and his whip! It was the start to the obstacle course.   

GAMES:  1ST: An Obstacle Course. This was the 'main event', which children kept coming back to throughout the party. The course included a rope swing/snake pit, tunnel, balance beam/boulder, another tunnel, a cave, and a diamond dig. First they had to swing across the snake pit (a blow-up pool with rubber snakes using the rope swing), crawl through a pop-up tunnel (inside were rubber rats and lizards), outrun the boulder while running across the balance beam (a 2x4 on the ground, and a huge beach ball, I tried brown plastic spray paint on the original ball, but when the paint dried it was tacky. A parent threw it at the kids.), through another tunnel (made of many cardboard boxes, flaps taped together, and also plenty of bubble wrap taped to the bottom so when they crawl through it pops) inside the cardboard tunnel they had to retrieve the Holy Grail (a plastic wine goblet from the dollar store, spray painted brown). 

Next through a cave (I covered my daughter's Step2 outside kitchen with my son's blankets, and from brown paper bags I cut many long strips and hung them inside), and the last part was to dig a diamond from the treasure box (the cooler full of sand, plastic bugs, worms, etc., and golf balls as the diamonds, the cooler was covered with brown paper bags). Then they had to race back through the course, with the diamond inside the Holy Grail, the same way they came, so that the rope swing was last. Another idea a friend had afterwards was to use a sharpie to label the golf balls a certain number and that would correlate to a certain prize. 

2ND: A Blow Dart Game. This was in place of pin the tail on the donkey. The children dipped a q-tip into their choice color of paint (I offered 3 colors), inserted the dry end of the q-tip into the end of a straw, and blew it out to hit an enlarged picture of Mola Ram. We did this a few times, each time aiming for a different part of the picture. I started to use a sharpie to label each child's mark, but it got confusing and in the end they just wanted to shoot the darts. The closest one to each target we aimed for got a prize. 

3RD: A Scavenger Hunt. I cut and used the large section of a brown paper bag to list the items, burnt the edges, and colored parts of it with a brown crayon to make it look old. Items included the skull, another smaller skull toy, Indy's hat, binoculars, a compass, a wooden cross (spray painted gold), a flashlight, the Holy Grail, a gold medallion (woman's necklace! He never knew!), 2 scorpions from the sand, 2 snakes from the snake pit, and 2 foam bones (taken from our Halloween decorations). This was a group effort, and items were hid throughout the yard and obstacle course while they were in another part of the yard doing the blow-dart game. 

4TH: The Pinata. I ordered it online, and was Indiana Jones as well. This I hung from my rope swing frame.   

COSTUMES: My son dressed as Indy, tan pants and brown shirt, used my brown hobo bag-like purse as the satchel, and I purchased the Indy hat, whip and machete online.   

CAKE: Indy of course! I had a local cake-lady make it up, which included Indy running from a giant boulder.   

FAVORS: I used the pre-made boxes that came in the party theme pack, and also added a bouncy ball (the boulder), some Indy cupcake rings (online), a few small rubber snakes, and some coloring pages I printed out from online.  The children all had a blast, and when they left the adults got to play on the rope swing! The hardest part was finding time to make the wooden frame, which took about a week with a 4 month old baby, and also making it sturdy enough not to fall over! I hope you enjoyed these ideas, and I hope you find a way to make some of them your own.  ~Brianna D.