Pizza Party -7yr- Pin Toppings On The Pizza

My son Joshua was turning 7 and wanted to have a pizza party for his birthday. I looked into several different pizza places and found one with a party room, which didn't require a deposit and I didn't have to pay per child.  This worked out perfect because I was inviting all the boys in the 1st grade class and some other friends. 

Since "Pizza Party" isn't a big theme I had a hard time find paper products that matched the theme.  So I went to the local craft store and found scrapbook paper that looked like pepperoni pizza.  I bought red paper plates and clear plastic places and used the pepperoni pizza paper and cut out circles to fit in the center of the plate. I then took the plastic plate and placed it on top so that the kids could eat off of it.

For cups and napkins I used Red for the pizza.  I took red table cloths (Plastic from the dollar store) and wrote different pizza toppings on it.  Like cheese, mushroom, sausage, onions etc.  Since I didn't have to pay per child I had the pizza's cut into "Party" slices.  Instead of 8 slices per pie I had 16, and this helped cut cost. I ordered enough pies for each child to have 2 slices. 

For games I had limited space.  Since I was in a party room I didn't have much room to move and there were 18 boys, I need to come up with games that would work in the room.  First I created Pizza Bingo. I used the print master program on my computer and I made bingo boards. I wrote Pizza Bingo across the top and then made a tic-tac-toe board in the middle. You can't have everyone win, so you need to make several different boards and mix them up when you hand them out. In each box I wrote a different ingredient and then wrote it on a piece of paper. I then took pennies to use as the bingo markers and handed out 9 to each child. The pieces of paper that had the ingredients on it went into a paper bag and I called out one by one until someone had bingo, only I had the kids call out "I love Pizza!"

I found goodie bags in the dollar store that had a trophy on it, so I used them as prizes and I filled them with candy and small toys. (I used matchbox cars, playing cards, small footballs anything that I could find that would fit in the bags. Again, this was from the dollar store. 

Another game that I made was Pin the Toppings on the Pizza. I took red and white poster board and made it look like a cheese pizza. I cut out yellow construction paper for the cheese and I use brown paper for the crust. Then I made several different toppings out of construction paper for the kids to pin on the pizza. I made mushrooms and pepperoni and onions. I took double sided tape and placed it on the back of the ingredient and wrote the Childs name on the front. Then I blind folded the kids and turned them several times. Then they were off to see who could get the closest to the middle.  I had used a black marker and made a dot in the center so that I would know who was the closest.  This was fun because the kids could feel the "cheese" and think that they were close when they were nowhere near the middle.  I used the same prizes as before to the top 5 kids.  (Since there were so many kids I tried to make sure that everyone had an opportunity to win a prize. 

Another game that I played was black & red.  For this game you need playing cards and a few wrapped prizes. (Before the kids came I bought a $5 gift certificate to the pizza place and used that as a prize. I folded it up and placed it in a tiny gift bag, so that no one would want to win the "little" prize) What you do is have the kids sit in a circle and then you place several wrapped items in the center. With the adult in the center and using playing cards, face down, you go around the circle and each child guesses if the card you turn over will be BLACK or RED? If the child guesses right, then they can choose a gift from the center (It cannot be opened until the game ends) if the child guesses incorrectly then the next child guesses. If there are no more prizes left then a child can take a prize from another child. (This is where I have fun. I usually take a gift that isn't the "best" and put it in a large gift bag or a gift box. This gives the illusion that it will be a great gift, but then the gift that looks to be average is usually the better prize. That is why I put the $5 gift certificate in the little bag, no one wanted it, and everyone fought over the big bag with just a small football in it.)

Once the games were done we sang happy birthday.  We had a cake made by my Mom that looked like a slice of pizza.(She used a Wilton Christmas tree pan and turned it upside down to give the illusion of a slice of pizza)All the kids thought that it looked real. My mom even had mushrooms, pepperoni and onions on it. (The waitress' thought that it was cool too!) I had brought ice cream cups with me, so the kids ate the cake and ice cream and then we opened presents. 

All in all the actual party was 2 hours long, and with all the kids and games, this was just enough time.  Everyone went home with a gift bag and a game prize and they told Josh that his party was great!!