Avatar/The Last Airbender Party

My son wanted an Avatar Airbender party this year. After a  bunch of research, I found very few ideas so I had to come up with some on my own. DECORATIONS:  Used balloons and streamers and tablecloths in red (fire), green (earth), blue (water) and yellow (air). Also printed out several of the four icons and had my son color them. We decorated the playhouse as a fire nation and put up three cardboard wall barriers wrapped in $1 plastic tablecloths with the respective colors for air, water and earth and painted the fire, water, air, earth icons on them. These were to be used in a later game too. ACTIVITIES: I came up with a game for each nation. AIR NOMADS: The first game was the airbending game. I used this for the kids to do something while we waited for everyone to come. I created air canons. I used regular drinking plastic cups and cut out the bottom. Then I used a round piece of plastic grocery bag to cover the top and put a rubber band around the top to hold it. Then I took a smaller rubber band and taped to center of plastic. When the children pull the rubber band a shot of air comes out the end. I put lots of stickers on the table for them to decorate their canon until everyone showed up. When everyone was there I explained to them that airbenders need to practice their skills to get good. We turned on a bubble maker and had others blowing larger bubbles. The kids were to go around snapping their air canons and popping the bubbles. If they were really good they could get the bubbles to move and not pop and if really expert you could split the bubbles in to several bubbles. The kids ran around having a great time controlling the bubbles. Everyone who passed training (participated) got AIRheads candy. EARTH KINGDOM: The next game was learning to earthbend. I bought some very small inexpensive geodes online. We hid them in a plastic pool filled with sand along with several other different rocks. We explained how earthbenders know the right rocks to control and many have power crystals in them. We showed them what they were looking for and then had them all search for one (they each only were to find 1 geode) and then my husband broke open the geodes (a large chisel and hammer works the best). The kids loved them. They got to keep the rocks. Everyone who passed training (participated) got ROCKcandy. WATER TRIBE: We found a 3-person mega water balloon launcher at Five Below. We decorated the playground as the fire nation with several characters on poster boards around the fire nation including the Fire Lord on top of the playhouse. Two parents held the launcher and the kids each got 3 tries to hit any of the characters or the playhouse to knock out the fire nation. The kids loved watching each others shots. My son actually hit the Fire Lord once! He was so happy. We shot from about 100 feet away! Everyone who passed training (participated) got GUSHERS candy. FIRE NATION: I thought of several ideas for firebending but in our state it is illegal to use sparklers and those snap poppers so we couldn't use any of those. So we had the giant water balloon fight at the end. The adults and my son defending the fire nation (playhouse) against all the other kids at the party (we had 22!). We placed the water balloons far from the fire nation so they lasted longer (the kids had to run back to reload). They had fun trying to hit the adults. Everyone who passed training (participated) got Atomic FIREBALL candy. Then we all id some more waterbending practice in the pool and had a great time! Afterwards we got out and had cake and ice cream. My son loves chocolate chip cookie cakes so we got four and used icing to decorate an icon (fire, water, earth and air) on each of the cakes. The kids had a great time calling out which piece of cake they wanted. I want air! I want fire!  FAVORS: I got an item for each nation. AIR: sky twirlers (4 for $1 at Five Below), FIRE: I found Dragon fire fingerboards (3 for $1 at $1 store), EARTH: Silly Putty (2 for $1 at dollar store) and WATER: pack of 100 water balloons and nozzle ($1 each at $1 store). So favors cost about $2/child. Most of the training prizes were 4 for $1 so that would be another $1/child. We did not have food other than water/lemonade (other drinks for adults) and snacks around the pool because the party was from 1:30-4. So the money we saved on that went towards better favors and prizes. I also had several Five Below coupons so it actually cost me a lot less than $3/child for favors/prizes and they got great useable stuff instead of junk.