Rescue Heroes -5yr- Musical Gifts

Last year for my son's 5th birthday, we had a "Rescue Heroes" themed party.  We got into the spirit of things with the

invitations:  I had my husband record the invitation in the voice of Billy Blazes, and he said, "Calling all Rescue Heroes...we have an emergency, and we need your help!  DJ is turning five, and we need you to come help celebrate at his party.  Come dressed as your favorite Hero if you'd like (then it included the information about the party).  I dubbed off copies of the tape and dropped off the tapes (plus a written copy of the information) into his friends' mailboxes. 

For the cake, I took a picture of my son standing next to his Rescue Heroes toys and then had the picture turned into one of those edible cake decorations and placed it on top of a standard yellow sheet cake.  The party room was set up in our basement.  I had white paper on the tables and markers set out so the kids could doodle if they wanted to. 

We decorated with streamers, etc, and then I had all of the Rescue Heroes toys set up in one corner of the room.  The kids would more than likely have been content to play with that stuff the whole time!  I got some ideas from the Rescue Heroes web site, including a "rescue the cat from the tree" game, which was played like Pin the Tail on the Donkey (the web site had pictures of a firefighter on a ladder to use as the "tails" and a large  tree with a cat stuck in it).  We also played "rescue, rescue, hero," which was like duck, duck, goose.  We had them make "volcanoes," they were actually build your own sundaes (ahead of time, I'd scooped the ice cream into cupcake liners and had them in a muffin tin, so they were easy to distribute). 

We also had a surprise special guest visitor in one of our local sheriff's deputies.  He came and gave out stickers and other goodies and talked to the kids about safety and then let them all get into his car and check it out.  We tried something new for the present opening with this party that worked out really well.  We set up two chairs, one for my son and one empty, then we had each kid find their gift and sit down.  Then, one at a time, they got to sit in the chair and give my son his gift...this took away from the crowding that usually happens, and allowed my son to actually open, look at and thank each gift giver individually. 

Finally, to give out the goody bags (which included Rescue Heroes coloring sheets from the web site, coloring books from the police dept, compasses and whistles), I wrapped them one at  time in tissue paper, so they eventually made a huge bundle. 

Then, the kids sat in a circle and we played music like for Hot Potato, only instead of being out when the music stopped, the kid got to open the package and take out his goody bag, then the game continued.  Everyone had fun, and it was neat to see the creativity of those kids who chose to dress up (we had my two sons, dressed as Jake Justice, one Gil Gripper, two Supermen, one Batman, one firefighter, one army guy and Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player).