The Hobbit/Lord Of The Rings Party -6yr-

My son, who loves the Lord of the Rings and Lego, was particularly excited when the LOTR lego sets came out. As his 6th birthday was coming up in a few weeks he asked for a Lego Lord of the Rings party. And so the work began 

INVITES: I did up a simple invite in Lord of the Rings font, asking the invitee to come and join us as a member of the Fellowship of Ring on a journey through Middle Earth on a quest to destroy the One Ring. 

DECORATIONS: These were kept simple with green and gold balloons, green napkins, a shelob spider hanging over the entrance, and the Eye of Sauron pinata.

ACTIVITIES: We divided the kids into three teams: elves, hobbits and men of gondor. When the kids arrived they got a handmade badge in their team colour and their own name as well as their elf/hobbit/gondor name. There was a poster for each team, so that the scores from the different activities could be recorded. We started out with a craft activity, where the kids could decorate cardboard shields and crowns with glitter and cut out emblems (tree of gondor, horse or rohan, etc).

We tried our hand at face painting (they could chose an emblem that represented their team, although all the girls wanted angels!). We also tried balloon modelling and the kids really enjoyed play fighting with their balloon swords. Then they divided into their teams and took at the games (see below). When the games were finished, the team that won the most points got to attack the Pinata first. The Pinata was homemade out of cardboard, with a red and orange Eye of Sauron painted on black background. It looked great and lasted really well - it took 18 kids three gos each before it spilled out any sweets. 

GAMES: The first game was Ring Toss - gold rings (made out of newspaper, dried chickpeas and papier mache) that had to be tossed into Mount Doom (bucket with cardboard volcano on the front). Then we had an archery game, with the kids using a children's archery set to try to shoot a large homemade poster of a Lego Uruk Hai. Then they had a Ring Hunt, where they had to find gold rings hidden around the room. This was also supposed to incorporate some fake spider webbing to mimic Shelob's Lair, but we forgot to bring the packets of Spiderweb. The best laid plans

The next game was a quiz with the kids trying to answer questions about the LOTR and other hero type films. Finally, we had Catch the Black Rider, which involved each team taking turns ro chase the Black Rider (me in a big black coat) and mark me with stickers in their teams colours. At the end we were able to tot up all the stickers to get each teams score.  

CAKE: A sponge cake covered in brown icing with a Bag End covered in green grass" icing. We made up the Lego model of Gandalf's cart and put this with a lego Frodo in front of the hobbit house. A sign made our of white icing read "No Admittance Except on Party Business". 

FAVORS: Simple favors were a white paper bag with each child's LOTR name badge with handmade LOTR bookmarks and sweets. And the kids got to bring home their shields crowns and balloon swords. "