Yu-Gi-Oh Party 7yr

Michael's 7th birthday Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium Adventure: My son is a huge Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, as are many of his friends, so it was no big surprise to me that he wanted a Yu-Gi-Oh! themed party for his 7th birthday.  I searched the web as usual and found great party supplies at Birthday Express and some on ebay, but very few ideas for party plans.  My son was determined, so we put our creative juices to work. I wasn't too sure about the history behind the trading card game, so I did a little research on Yu-Gi-Oh! The main character and hero is a boy named Yugi. According to the story line, Yugi's grandfather runs a gaming shop and introduces him to an ancient Egyptian card fighting game called "Duel Monsters."  The game pits different mystical creatures against each other in magical duels. Young Yugi solves an ancient Egyptian Millennium Puzzle, releases the spirit of the powerful King Yami Yugi. Yugi is rewarded and starts on a path to become Yu-Gi-Oh!, King of Games and to prevent the diabolical Shadow Games form ever returning to the world.  I decided to work around the Egyptian legend theme, while incorporating my son's favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters. I used stiff brown paper (the kind you wrap packages with) for the invitations, which were printed with Papyrus font, rolled up scroll fashion and tied with raffia. Almost everyone was able to come to Michael's Millennium Adventure, so we ended up with 11 boys and 6 girls, ages 5-10, which was about the limit for our house.  We held the party on a Saturday afternoon.  We placed two tiki torches (from a previous luau party) out front and tied a bouquet of black, gold and purple balloons plus a Yu-Gi-Oh! balloon to the front stair railing to welcome guests.  Inside we decorated the living/dining room area with more balloons and streamers in the same black, gold and purple colors, plus some cool lights for a little added effect (lava lamps, star disco ball, and one that looks like lightning striking).  We hung up our son's Yu-Gi-Oh! blanket on one wall, and we set out several of his 12-15 action figures around the room (Slifer the Sky Dragon, Blue Eyes White Dragon and Blue Eyes Toon Dragon I believe).  I also found a nice Yu-Gi-Oh! tablecloth and an oversized Yu-Gi-Oh! balloon at Birthday Express.  The house looked great.  I downloaded a few free Yu-Gi-Oh! music clips, but it wasn't enough.  We had a couple of CDs of middle eastern music, so I popped those in to play and the atmosphere was set. I snagged a cool Yu-Gi-Oh! hoodie on ebay, which we gave to the birthday boy to wear to his party.  He was thrilled!  As the guests arrived, we started them working on crafts at our dining room table, which was extended as large as we could make it, and covered in the Yu-Gi-Oh! tablecloth and baskets of crayons.  I downloaded Yu-Gi-Oh! coloring pages and puzzles, then copied and stapled them into a book for each guest.  For the cover, I used tan cardstock on which I printed a picture of Yu-Gi-Oh! and added Michael's 7th Birthday Millennium Adventure in Papyrus (Egyptian style) font and a few hieroglyphics.  I also downloaded, printed on cardstock and cut out Yu-GI-Oh! door hangers (free from yugioh.com) for the kids to decorate with markers, glitter pens and stick-on jewels I had placed in baskets on the table.  The last craft was a terrific colorful paper Yu-Gi-Oh! fortune teller (free from yugioh.com), which I also downloaded, printed and cut to size before the party.  The kids just had to fold it on the lines. The top four squares held pictures of different characters, so they had to pick one and spell out the name (such as JOEY) while a partner opened and closed the fortune teller.  Next they picked a color, then another, while their partner continued opening and closing the fortune teller the appropriate number of times, and then finally they read the fortune inside.  The crafts were all fun and very inexpensive.  After the guests arrived and everyone had a chance to at least make their door hanger and fortune teller, we set the crafts aside, and I explained the history of Yu-Gi-Oh! so all of the kids would connect the Egyptian-themed activities to the character.  We moved into our living room for a game of Wrap the Mummy.  My son had a Yu-Gi-Oh! spell card named Call of the Mummy, so we showed it to the kids and said we had to make our own living mummies to prepare to dual. I divided the kids into four teams (Egyptian Jewels, Dragon Fighters, Shadow Riders and Dualists) and gave each team several rolls of toilet paper. They each chose someone on their team to be the mummy, and the others wrapped them from head to toe with the toilet paper, except for their nose and mouth of course.  Great photo ops!  Then they had even more fun undressing the mummies and gathering up all of the toilet paper into a big trash bag. That part was a bit chaotic.   I called our next game Ancient Egyptian Millennium Puzzle Treasure Hunt, and this took up most of our party time.  The kids remained on their same four teams.  I had placed all the girls together on one team, and each team had at least one child who could read well, plus a parent helper.  I assigned each team a color and gave them matching arm bands decorated with hieroglyphics:  Egyptian Jewels (all girls - pink), Dragon Fighters (green), Shadow Riders (yellow) and Dualists (blue).  I had created 4 clues for each team (16 total) to solve: one riddle, one cut into a puzzle, one hieroglyphic to decipher, and one scrambled word.  I had placed the teams clues in numbered matching pink, green, yellow and blue envelopes.  I gave each team the first envelope and hid the others all over our house.  If they accidentally found an envelope belonging to another team (a different color), they were instructed to leave it alone. Here are the four clues I made up for the Dualists Team: Clue 1:  Solve this riddle to find your second clue: Where does a boy put down his head to dream of duals and dragons? (answer: under our son's pillow) Clue 2: Translate these Egyptian picture letters, called hieroglyphics, to find your third clue, in or near the BATHTUB (given in hieroglyphics). I included a copy of the alphabet in hieroglyphics which I found online. Clue 3: Unscramble the letters to find where your final clue is hidden: KCED (answer: deck) Clue 4: You are almost finished!  Put the puzzle pieces together to find the treasure!!!  Search the large box where pharaoh's robes magically turn from wet to dry. (answer: clothes dryer) I printed this clue on a notecard and cut it into 6 pieces like a puzzle.  I had made four small pyramids from the stiff brown wrapping paper, which my kids enjoyed decorating with hieroglyphics. The girls pyramid contained toy necklaces and rings for each child, the three boys pyramids held toy snakes and frogs, and they all held gold-colored chocolate coins.  We hid them in the locations identified by the fourth clue, with one last colored envelope containing the note: Congratulations!  You have solved the Egyptian Millennium Puzzle and are to be awarded these gifts by ancient King Yugi Yami!  Please share!  It was quite a bit of work to put the treasure hunt together, but the kids had a lot of fun, and they were so excited to find the pyramids full of treasures.  We then moved outside for a red dragon pinata that we called Slifer the Sky Dragon (a Yu-Gi-Oh! monster), and we had the kids use one of my son's toy plastic swords to pretend to be Yugi and dual the monster.  I also found information online about a couple of interesting ancient Egyptian games.  One was a type of tug-of-war where everyone links elbows.  Some of the boys got a bit wild with the tug-of-war game, so we stopped that pretty quickly before any arms were broken, but I did end up with a few great photos of all of the guests with their elbows linked!  Then we held a relay race, where the kids first walked like an Egyptian balancing a basket of dragon eggs (large plastic Easter eggs) on their heads, walked like a scarab beetle (on hands and feet) and then played leapfrog with the person next in line.  It was a lovely day outside, and they needed to release some energy!  So, we played an impromptu game of Monster freeze tag, where the kids all pretended to be various monsters, and the child who was It was Yugi.  I told them I was going to summonup some food.  We moved back inside for Egyptian pyramid cake, Magical Blast (ice cream) and Dragon Blood (fruit punch). I baked two regular 9x12 cakes, one chocolate, one vanilla, cut them into 9, 7, 5 and 3 squares, and stacked them from largest to smallest, frosting each layer lightly.  After stacking the bottom two layers together, I gut a 2 square out of the center of the cake and placed a ziplock bag of gold-colored chocolate coins inside.  I covered the whole thing with light tan butter cream frosting, then used a toothpick to draw vertical lines that looked like bricks.  I placed the pyramid on a heavy piece of cardboard which I had lightly sprayed with Pam. I sprinkled graham cracker crumbs around the base to look like sand, and then I added several 3 Yu-Gi-Oh! toy figures, including Yugi dueling my son's favorite monster on top, plus gold sparkler candles and my son's Millennium Eye pendant necklace on one side.  It was quite a hit!  The kids especially loved it when we discovered the hidden treasure inside.  We used Yu-Gi-Oh! plates and napkins, purple forks and spoons.  For our son's family birthday party, we used the leftover Yu-Gi-Oh! plates and napkins, and I designed a cake to look like a big Yu-Gi-Oh! card, with seven stars (for seven years).  I then stuck one of the toy figures at each corner and added a giant #7 candle at the top.  After eating cake and ice cream, I moved the guests back into the living room for the birthday boy to open his presents.  We had the kids all sit in a circle holding their gift, and then I played the Bangle's song Walk Like an Egyptian (it was just more fun than the middle eastern music), while the kids passed the gifts from left to right.  Each time I stopped the music, the birthday boy got to open whatever gift he was holding.  This kept everyone entertained and slowed down the gift-opening long enough for me to keep track of who gave him what!  For the guests take-home treat bags, I started with plain purple and plain yellow paper sacks.  Using a program I found online (there are many of these), I was able to print everyone's name in what looked like a cartouche (vertical hieroglyphics) with our color printer.  I cut these out and glued them to the front of each sack and also wrote their name in English, plus added a couple of Yu-Gi-Oh! stickers.  The treat sacks held Yu-Gi-Oh! gummies, sparkly notepads, Yu-Gi-Oh! pens, Yu-Gi-Oh! 3 figures and stickers that looked just like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I got a great deal on ebay for a lot of 24 of the 3 figures (used on the cake and also as take-home gifts) and also the Yu-Gi-Oh! sticker cards.  Guests also took home their treasure hunt prizes and pinata goodies, plus the door hangers and coloring books.   For thank you notes, I started with tan paper, folded in half.  I used a software program to put an exotic looking frame around the picture of all the kids linking elbows from the Egyptian tug-of-war game.  I printed this picture on the front and added THANK YOU VERY MUCH! under it using the Papyrus font, and added some Yu-Gi-Oh! clipart.  On the top half of the inside I printed a word search puzzle, which I created online and downloaded for free from Discovery School's puzzlemaker site.  The kids were instructed to find and circle all of the words in the puzzle (yugioh, birthday, party, good, time, present, happy and fun) and copy the leftover letters onto blank spaces provided to reveal a secret message:  Thanks so much from your friend Michael!  Our son wrote his own personal thank you note on the bottom half of the page.  We put these in envelopes and sealed them with Yu-Gi-Oh! stickers.  His friends are still talking about how much fun they had at this party!