Ninja Turtle Party -4yr-

My four year-old wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party.  There wasn't a lot of party supplies locally for this theme, so I had to be pretty creative. 

For the invitations, I found an image online of the TMNT and made cards on Word with it.  I had the image on the left side and on the right had Come 'shellebrate' Max's fourth birthday" (borrowed from another contributor) with all the party info below.  Across the bottom was printed "Cowabunga Dudes!"  I fit two cards on a page cut them out and put them in green envelopes. 

I decorated everything for the party in different shades of green.  When the kids came to the party they were instructed to go through an expandable play tunnel that we called a "sewer."  Once they got to the other side of the tunnel they were instructed to put their hands in the green ooze that they found there (made of approximately two cups of cornstarch 1 1/2 cups of water and several drops of green food coloring).  Once they touched the green ooze they would turn into turtles.  Each would put on a mask made of a strip of fabric with eye holes cut out. 

They would also put on a turtle shell which I had made out of an oblong Chinet plate that I spray painted green and drew on the markings of squares with rounded corners with a black permanent marker for the markings.  I attached these to their backs by punching two holes on each side towards the top and tied a piece of elastic thread through each side.  These were their arm holes--they loved them.  Then we hit a pinata.  I refused to pay $65 for something that would get beat apart in minutes so I made a very simple one by taking a gift box filled with candy covering it in tissue paper and piecing a simple TMNT face out of paper on it.  It actually looked more likt a TMNT than the $65 one I could have ordered. 

After the pinata we played a different version of musical chairs.  I got discontinued pizza boxes for free at Pizza Hut and put them in a circle on the ground and had each child stand on one.  I downloaded "Turtle Rock" from Disney Records off the Internet (the TMNT  theme song was not available yet).  As I played the music the kids would walk around the circle and one pizza box was removed.  When the music stopped the kids would scramble to  stand on a pizza box.  The one left out would be eliminated and so on until all the boxes were gone. 

Then we had lunch which of course was pizza the TNMTs favorite.  We also had GREEN grapes and chips.  Everything was served on green paper products and we had green KOOLAID to drink.  For the cake I had made a round cake and frosted it white.  I piped in a simple face of a TMNT on the top of it.  Then we opened presents!  Lots of fun things we did and I think we converted a few TMNT fans!"