Rescue Hero Party -5yr- Frescue from the Cave

My son had a Rescue Hero party to celebrate his fifth birthday. I printed invitations from the rescue hero website (www.rescueheroes.com). I also printed pictures that I used as decorations, as well as badges and rescue hero name tags, which I glued on to red lunch bags to use for goody bags.

The party games all revolved around the rescue theme. First was the "Cave In". We created a cave under our dining room table using large pieces of cardboard that we obtained at the local recycling center. We spray painted them gray and black to look like rock, and assembled them so that they covered the entire table, to the floor. We cut out an entrance and covered it with black fabric, so the cave was totally dark. I also cut up large pieces of foam and painted them to look like rocks. I used some of the rocks to cover the entrance, others were scattered inside. Inside the cave we put small stuffed animals. Each child was given a small flashlight (theirs to keep after the party) and they had to enter the cave and "rescue" a trapped animal. They loved it.

The second game was an obstacle course (thank you to other submissions on this web site for the idea). Each child received a fire hat. They started in the clubhouse of our swingset (The Command Center) and had to slide down, cross a bridge that we set up over a plastic swimming pool, use the hose to put out a "fire" that was drawn in chalk on the back of the chimney, crawl through a tunnel, and "rescue" a stuffed animal in a low tree.

The third rescue was the "Avalanche" The pool, which was covered with a blue tarp for the obstacle course, was filled with popcorn. Buried in the popcorn were snowman bendy figures that the kids had to dig out. They loved this. I was glad we did it outside though, as popcorn was everywhere!

The last two games were good fillers, and could last as long as was needed. Each child was given an animal mask. One child put his mask aside and was the "rescue hero". The other kids, wearing their masks, hid and the rescue hero had to find them. Each child also received a bird glider (to resemble Ariel Flyer's Hawk). They had a lot of fun flying them around. This gave me time to get ready for the next event. We also had a pinata. I purchased a yellow, smile face, disk shaped pinata. I covered the smile face with the rescue hero emblem (printed from the web site). I created a stencil out of another emblem and used it to decorate a simple round cake with colored sugars. It looked pretty cool.

All of the goodies (flashlights, fire hats, animal masks, bendy snowmen, and bird gliders) were purchased from Oriental Trading Company(www.oriental.com) and were fairly inexpensive. I used solid color (red and yellow) plates, napkins, tablecloth, etc. The party was a huge success. I had a lot of fun creating it and the kids had a blast.