Magic Treehouse -7yr- Five Activities

For my son's 7th birthday, we hosted a "Magic Treehouse" party.  Most of his friends age 7-9 were familiar with the book series.  My parents have recently built a large treehouse in their yard so it was a perfect opportunity to host an outdoor party.  I used my computer to make invitations that looked similar to the cover of a MT book, calling it "Magic Treehouse #7" for his age, with the title "Birthday in the Backyard".  I used some acutal MT graphics from the Random House website to make them look authenic. 

The main plan for the party was to have 5 activities related to the books.  For each activity, we sent the kids up into the treehouse where we had a large fan blowing and a strobe light blinking to simulate the treehouse spinning.  I played a "wind" sound effect each time they went up.  When I called for them, I had a theme song playing and told them "where" they had traveled in time. 

The 5 activities were as follows:

1.  "Dinosaurs after Dark" (song:  Walk the Dinosaur) game:  balloon stomp to kill the T Rex eggs

2.  "Mummies in the Morning" (song:  Walk Like an Egyptian) game:  relay race where pairs of kids wrapped each other up in toilet paper like mummies and ran around large cardobard pyramids made from refridgerator boxes.

3.  "Hour of the Olympics" (song:  Olympic theme).  Game:  obstacle course set up in yard consisting of tires run, herdle jump, balance beam, jump over blue tarp (water hazard), see-saw run, and crawl under a sheet stapled across stakes in the ground.  Sounds complicated, but we used donated tires (free!) and scrap wood to construct everthing else.  We made the course for 2 to run at a time, so the kids loved competing.  I painted Olympic rings on the sheet that they crawled under.  After each race, each kid got a "gold metal"  This was definitely the hit of the party for both boys and girls.

4.  "Vacation Under the Volcano" (song:  Volcano Song) game:  limbo contest.  Also time to take a break and have cake/snacks.

5.  "Pirates Past Noon" (song:  Yo Ho a Pirate's Life for Me)  game:  treasure hunt.  I bought cheap fabric in red, yellow, and black which I cut into squares to make pirate "scarfs". 

Each child had to reach into a basket to choose their scarf, which determined his or her team color.  They all tied them on their heads.  I gave each team their first clue (1 of 6) and they set off over the yard finding clues to lead them to a map. 

The first team to find all 6 clues found the map and then found the "treasure".  The treasure was actually the treat bags for each child so everyone got something regardless of which team got there first.  They LOVED this activity! The treat bags were just brown paper lunch bags that I had glued silk leaves to at the top. 

I painted a tree trunk below the leaves and glued on an image of the Magic Treehouse I got off the 'net.  Inside each bag was a bag of "gummy mummies" and chocolate gold coins (treaure) as well as a MT book.  I just purchased a variety of books (less than $3 each) and let kids trade if they wanted to. 

For food, we kept it simple since it was an afternoon party.  I had a cake made with a tree and treehouse on it, and served basic kid-friendly snacks and gatorade since they were so active.  The games took less time than I expected, but we easily filled the 2-hour time. 

Very inexepensive party but probably the best one yet!