Lego-riffic Party -6yr- Lego Placemats

For my son Trevor's sixth birthday, he really wanted a Lego party.  I started planing early to give me time to design and make a lot of things myself and save some money. 

INVITATIONS:  I made these myself.  First, I took all blue legos and my son and I built a big number 6" out of them.  Then I had him hold the six and took a photo of him.  I then took a piece of 5 x 7 piece of blue cardstock and on the front wrote printed "Trevor is Turning Six!!!" and glued the photograph there.  For the back of the card I cut out six 1-1/4" circles in the same color cardstock as the card.  On each of these I had printed the following: (1st dot) Come Build Some Fun at (2nd Dot) Trevor's Lego-riffic Birthday Party! (3rd Dot) Where: our address (4th Dot) When: December 3rd 4 - 7pm (5th Dot) Pizza and Cake will be Served (6th Dot) RSVP to xxx-xxx-xxxx.  I then glued these in a two by three grid on the back using 3-D foam dots so that it looked just like a real Lego.  We got really great response to these and it got the invitees really excited to come to a Lego party. 

DECORATIONS:  I stuck with the basic Lego brick colors - Yellow Blue Green Red and Black - for my decorations.  I opened up our diningroom table as big as it would go and got a black plastic disposeable tablecloth for it.  I then made a placemat for each child (we had 10 total including my 2 children).  I found 12" x 12" heavy cardstock at the craftstore that had an allover Lego design (it was a licenced product).  I got a sheet of this in red for each child.  I then cut out 2" black letters to spell out each child's name and glued these across the top of the paper.  I printed out a 5 x 7 sheet of "Lego Fun Facts" that I had found on the Lego website onto white cardstock and glued this onto the center of each placemat.  I then took some stickers depicting all different kinds of Lego minifigures and put two to the left and two to the right of the Fun Facts sheet.  Each placemat had different minifigure stickers so all of them were a little different.  This gave the kids a lot to talk about when they first got to the party. 

On the back I stuck a little note that said "Thanks for helping me celebrate my 6th birthday!" with my son's name and the date.  When these were done I took them to Staples to get them Laminated.  So the placemats went around the table at each seat then down the middle of the table was an enormous pile of Lego Bricks.  I did red yellow green blue and black streamers around the room and balloons in the same colors.  I made a huge Lego out of a cardboard box that hung on the door as a "wreath".  I took a rectangular box and covered it in red duct tape (from the craft store).  I then took a 2" slab of styrofoam (also from the craft store) and cut it with biscuit cutters into big circles.  I covered these in red duct tape and put them on top of the box in a 2 x 3 formation to make my huge Lego.  The kids all commented on it and LOVED it. 

I also made party hats for each of the kids.  I cut a 12 x 12 piece of paper into a huge 12" dia. Circle.  I cut the circle in half then bent each half circle into a cone shape and taped it at the back.  I wrote each child's name on their hat and cut out a yellow lego head (like a minifigure has) and glued it to the front of the hat.  I added a piece of elastic for under their chin to complete them.  I did them in all different Lego colors which looked great.  As you looked down the table it was a sea of kids and a sea of Lego heads.

GAMES:  When the guests had all arrived I had them find their placemat at the table and settle in.  Our first game was to have each child build their first initial out of Legos.  The Moms helped out a bit with some of the younger kids.  As each child finished I had them come over to the poster of Legoman that was on the wall and took a photo of them with their letter sculpture and Legoman.  These photos were sent with his thank you notes.  "Legoman" was a poster that I had made.  I cut out paper to make a 3 foot tall x 2 foot wide Lego minifigure then laminated it and hung it at kid-level on my sliding glass door.  The second game we played was "Pin the Hat on the Legoman".  I had cut out a paper hat for each child to attempt to pin in the right spot on Legoman's head while blindfolded.  This was a lot of fun. 

After the game each child got a little bag with some Lego brick shaped red chocolates.  I had made these using a chocolate mold I purchased on Ebay.  These went into their goodie bags to bring home.  The next game was "Lego Basket Toss".  I purchased these squishy Lego "stressballs" from Ebay.  Each was bright yellow and about 5 x 2 inches.  I set up a small bucket at one end of the room and had the children line up at the "foul line".  Each took turns trying to throw the 10 stressball Legos into the bucket.  All the kids counted as they got them in.  This was a big hit.  When the game was done each child got to keep one of the stressball Legos which went into their goodie-bags. 

Next we went back to the dining table to build some more.  I gave each child a car base - a small Lego platform with working wheels on it.  They then built themselves a car on top of the base.  They then went into the playroom where they found a ramp that I had made out of a large TV box covered in black paper and designed to look like a multi-lane road.  I used PVC pipes as legs at one end of the box and glued wood moulding to the left and right edges of the "road" to keep the cars from falling off the sides.  The children then took turns having races with their cars down the ramp.  This kept them busy for awhile.  We then played a few rounds of "Brick-Brick-Lego" which was just Duck-Duck-Goose with different words.  The kids got Lego stickers after this game which went into their goodie bags. 

FOOD:  My son is a rediculously picky eater so we didn't do anything very imaginative for food.  Just popcorn and pizza.  I got pepperoni as an homage to the dots on the Legos but really that was about it for sticking to theme with food.  CAKE:  For the cake I made the Lego brick cake that has been suggested by many others on this site.  I made a 9 x 12 sheet cake.  I cut it into thirds.  One of the thirds I cut in half.  I then stacked them so that I had one rectangular  9 x 4 double layer cake and one square 4 x 4.5" double layer cake.  I frosted the big one bright green and the small one bright yellow.  I then frosted 8 marshmallows in green to top the big cake making it into a 2 x 4 Lego brick.  I frosted 4 marshmallows in yellow to top the little cake making it into a 2 x 2 Lego brick.  I arranged these onto a cake platform then added the blue Lego "6" sculpture (the one we had used in his photograph on the invitations) and a little cardstock sign reading "Happy 6th Birthday Trevor!".  Needless to say the cake was good but the frosting-covered marshmallows were a HUGE hit with the kids. 

FAVORS:  Each child went home with their Placemat their personalized party hat and a goodie bag with red Lego chocolates a Lego stress-ball and Lego stickers. 

THANK YOU NOTES:  Each child received a homemade thank you note with a cutout of a lego-head (as was on their party hats) with a talk bubble reading "Thanks so much for coming to my party and making my 6th birthday so Lego-riffic!"  I then jotted a personal note thanking them for their gift and enclosed the photograph of the child holding their letter sculpture and standing next to Legoman.  The party was a blast for everyone most especially my son.  I definitely used a LOT of ideas from this website in my preparations for the party.  Thanks for all the help!  I couldn't have done it without everyone's help! "