Cap'n Jacob's Pirate 7yr - Walk the Plank

Pirate Party 7yr old  Our son wanted a pirate party for his 7th birthday, so I got to planning, along with ideas from this website, and the party was a huge success! 

INVITATIONS:  I bought cardstock that was the color of parchmant paper and used a treasure map clipart picture which I faded out to be in the background and put the wording on top.  I got 2 invitations per piece of paper.  The wording was a follows:  Aye Me Hearties Ye be invited fer some birthday spirits at Captn Jacob's Pirate Bash.  Chart yer course fer the pier at XXXX (our last name) Lagoon.  We be a meetin Sunday July 18th at 1 pm fer some swashbuckling fun, grub and kiddie spirits.  Wave yer flag if ye be attendin or have yer mum send message by yer phone.  See ye there Aarrgghh!  I then burnt the edges of the invitation to look like a real treasure map.  I rolled up each map and tied with raffia.  Each rolled up map was placed in a brown glass rootbeer bottle (bought in a pack of four, emptied, rinsed and air dried).  Since the caps were twist off, I twisted the caps back on to close.  Around the neck of the bottle I tied with raffia a tag that said:  To: XXXXX  Ye be Invited w/ treasure chest clipart to give added decoration.  The invitations were then hand delivered.  Everyone thought they were great, the children were excited about the party! 

DECORATIONS:  I made a couple of signs that I added to different areas.  Coming into the house I had a sign that read ENTER AT YE OWN RISK, under the patio LAND LUBBERS COVE, on the shed CAPTNS QUARTERS and X MARKS THE SPOT inside the shed.  I also had signs by each activity.  I made each sign on the computer using the Blackadder font, this looked "piratey", printed out on cardstock and attached to a paint stick for easy display.  As the children arrived they each received a bandana and eye patch.  The boys got black bandanas and the girls got pink ones.  I found these at our local craft store.  The eye patches were ordered from Oriental Trading.  We then gave each child tattoos, either on their arms, cheek or back of the neck and most wanted more than one.  I found pirate themed tattoos on ebay for a very reasonable price. 

GAMES: The first game we played was "Walk the Plank":  supplies:  blue plastic table cloth, shaving cream, blindfold.  Lay out the table cloth and make your plank with the shaving cream.  The ages of the children would determine how wide you make the space between each line of shaving cream.  The idea of the game is to walk the plank (the space between the shaving cream) blindfolded without touching the shaving cream.  We had everyone take off their socks, just in case.  I had 2 tablecloths, and good thing because this could get messy.  Everyone watched and took turns with this game.  Then we went on to "Cannonball Pop":  supplies needed:  black balloons, yarn.  Blow up each balloon and attach a yarn string about 3 feet long.  When it is time to play, attach the yarn to each childs ankle, knots work better than just tying in a bow.  Object:  say "go" and each child has to break the others childrens balloons without having their own popped.  Once their balloon is popped, they are out.  The next games I set up as stations and had a few friends help with each game so that the children could rotate to each one.  We had about 21 children and this worked out well.  "Musical Islands":  supplies needed:  different colored paper cut into the shapes of islands. Music.  Musical chairs, using colored paper islands instead.  "Hook's Cave":  supplies needed:  plastic cups, tinfoil, pretzels.  Cut a slit in the bottom of the cup in the shape of an X.  Make a hook out of tin foil and stick it through the X and just bend over on the inside of the cup.  The cup will fit over the childs hand and they will have to pick up pretzels with the hook.  We had 2 separate bowls of pretzels and they took turns to see who could get the most in a certain amount of time. "Alligators cove":  supplies needed:  foam board, styrofoam balls.  Draw an alligator with its mouth open on the foam board  Cut out a hole in the mouth.  Throw the balls through the hole in the mouth.  "Treasure Island":  supplies needed:  plastic storage bin, sand, little pirate themed toys.  Fill the bin with sand burying the toys.  Have the children hunt for the buried treasure.  The last two games were for all of the children to play together.  The day of the party it poured, so we had to improvise.  "Ahoy Mateys":  supplies needed:  large cardboard boxes, spray paint, dowel, posterboard, fabric, newspaper, blow up sharks, fishing net.  I cut the boxes down one side to open lengthwise.  Once spread out, I cut the top to make the boat shape and spray painted the boxes to look like wood.  I attached strips of wood to the back of each box to keep the box sturdy when it was standing up.   I named each ship.  One was Capt'n Jakes and the other was Lil Wak.  Using the dowel, I attached that to the cardboard from the back and made a pirate flag out of black posterboard which I attached to the dowel.  I also made each ship a sail out of cream colored fabric.  I placed the fishing net out of one of the ships and put the sharks on the floor (the water) in between the two ships. This was supposed to be a cannonball fight with water balloons, but since it was raining, I had a good friend of mine crumble up newspaper to make the cannonballs.  Since we couldn't put the ships in the middle of the yard like I originally planned, we set this game up in the garage.  We had 2 teams and they stood behind the ships, when we said "go" they began throwing the newspaper cannons at the other ship.  The object was to have the least amount of cannonballs behind your ship when we said "stop".  Before we started, we mentioned that the object was to have the cannonballs behind the other ship, not hit the other kids. This was lots of fun, I can only imagine how fun it would be with the water balloons!  The last game was the "Treasure Hunt":  supplies needed:  styrofoam cooler, black, gold and brown spray paint, goodie bags, treasure hunt poem.  Spray paint the cooler to look like a treasure chest.  Inside I placed the goodie bags.  This was the treasure.  Inside each goodie bag were beads (from the mardi gras section of our local party store), bubblegum coins (OT), bubbles from the dollar store that I attached labels to saying Thank ye fer comin to me pirate party!, bouncy balls in the shape of rocks (OT) and ring pops.  We made a poem for our hunt, using things in our yard as the different clues.  The idea was to have a new clue at each area, but since it was raining I was in charge of reading each clue and with our umbrellas we all ran around the yard looking for the treasure.  This was the treasure hunt wording we used, which worked for our yard.  You could rephrase for it to work for you too. RULES:  Ahoy Me Mateys, the time has come to find the hidden treasure, ye'll sure have fun.  Follow the rules along ye trip or walk the plank and sink your ship.  Now mateys listen, here are ye rules.  \*no fighting, no pushing, stay a  group .. No running ahead.\*  Aye, Aye Me Hearties, the hunts to begin, may all ye ships come in to win.  Here is ye first clue, the game has begun, lets all be sure to have lots of fun.  CLUES: Clue 1  A pirates life is the life for me,look for a birdhouse hanging from a tree. Clue 2 as any pirate ought to know this is where the grapes grow. Clue 3 To find the next clue, all hands on deck hurry up, before the ship is wrecked. Clue 4 Jolly Roger is my name, now find the flag with me on the same. Clue 5 Land lubbers Cove is next, sea dog now you need to look for the green frog. Clue 6 Cannon balls don't go through this hoop this is the 2nd last leg of your loop. Clue 7 One more clue and the treasure is yours look for "Capt'n Quarters" on the doors. Clue 8 Sit down and wait for all the ships to arrive,and then you will get the big surprise.  It ended at the shed where inside was the treasure chest.  We had them zig zag back and forth across the yard and even in the pouring rain, it was tons of fun! 

FOOD:  We kept the food fairly simple, we cooked out on the grill.  For the children we made sharks blood drinks which was fruit punch and sprite.  They all got a kick out of it.  CAKE:  I made the cake using an 11 X 14 pan.  supplies for decorating:  rock candy (chocolate candy with a outer coating that is decorated to look exactly like rocks and I found these at a gourmet candy shop in our local mall) wooden ship (i found this at our local craft store for $1 and I had to assemble and paint it, but this was great because this is where I wrote Happy Birthday JACOB and signed the bottom for him to keep), treasure chest (again bought at our local craft store unfinshed, I pained it and added chocolate foiled coins inside)  Pretzel palm trees (I took pretzel rods and added a palm tree leaves topper that I just cut out of construction paper and taped around the prezel rod.)  I iced the whole cake with a layer of white icing.  Then for the water I used piping gel (found at my local craft store in the baking section) which I added blue food coloring to and iced about 3/4 of the cake with this swirling it to look like water.  I then made the shore out of brown sugar, you could also use graham cracker crumbs.  And along the shore I dyed some icing green and using the grass icing tip to make the rest of the cake to look like tall grass.  This is where I placed the pretzel palm trees with the treasure chest underneath.  I placed the rock candies in clusters to look like rock formations in the water and placed the ship the middle of the water.  My description just cannot do this cake justice. I was proud of how it turned out.  We needed at least 3 hours for this party. It was a blast to plan and even better seeing how much fun the children had.  When it was time to leave each child took home their bandana, eye patch, goodie bag and I had balloon swords that I premade ahead of time and waited to give out until the end so that the swords wouldn't pop before they left our house.  I hope that you will find some ideas useful for your pirate party.  I have lots of pictures too.  Ahoy Mateys!  AARRGGHH.....