Surprise Space -5yr- Pin Earth to the Solar System

For my son's 5th b'day we threw him a surprise SPACE b'day party. He is very much into any thing to do with exploring the solar system. It became a surprise because at the very last minute we decided to have his party on his b'day itself without waiting for a weekend. It was a tough job but well worth the effort to remember the look on his face!  

Decorations - we had the games in the play room. So I decorated the walls with cut out pictures of the solar system in their proper order. I bought these rather cheap at Wal-Mart. I painted a corkboard, which we had, in blue. On the center of it I stuck a sticker of the sun and all around the sun pasted stickers of the other planets, leaving the earth sticker out. I used this board later with the earth sticker for a game later on.

I bought a Star wars space ship inflatable pool, at a discount store, inflated it and filled it with black water balloons, filled with air, and silver and blue metallic shreds. The pool, too, I used for a game later. The table was covered in black tissue and we put star confetti all over it.

The center piece was one of those sparkly starry tree kind of things. I tied marbled balloons, these looked exactly like different planets, and 5th b'day balloons on all the chairs. Since we were using the yard too we made a little cardboard rocket outside for the kids to play in.  

Games & Activities - Since this was a surprise b'day until my son came I had a simple craft for the kids to do. I had cut out the shape of a space shuttle with aluminum foil. They had to glue this on to a black construction paper and decorate it and the paper with an outerspace scene. I provided glitter glue, some metallic markers, shiny stickers and the star confetti out of the table! The pictures were pasted behind the table on the windows.

After the surprises were yelled we had a moon rock hunt. I hid little bouncy balls in the pool among the balloons and shreds. This turned out to be a great hit. They went wild in there and I let them enjoy it there for quite a while. For finding the moon rocks they were given little pouches of marbles.

Then it was time to play pin, or rather stick, earth in the solar system. I used the corkboard for this. They had to place the sticker of the earth in it's correct position. The prize for this were glow sticks. Then they all went out side to play tag with the glow sticks. Of course with this in mind I also provided batteries for the glow sticks. They had fun playing aliens outside.   It was cake time after that.

The cake was simple. Just a sheet cake with blue icing a play space shuttle placed on it and the moon iced as was some red icing to look like flames of the shuttle. After eating the cake it was the grand finale. My husband actually launched rockets in the drive way. He bought a kind which said it was safe to do so in the back yard. The kids loved it!  

For food it was just pizza but through experience we knew the kids would be too excited to eat, which really was the case. I place foil cup cake liners all over the table and filled these with buzz light fruit snacks, buzz light cereal and colored mini marshmallows. I also found some chocolate macaroons that really looked like asteroids!   I filled a transparent favor bag which had stars on them with blue tissue.

For favours I got glow in the dark cosmic shapes, stickers of the solar system, and glow side walk chalk - also in the shapes of the sun, moon, and Saturn.   The kids really seemed to have a wonderful time and their parents were pretty impressed. All this was planned over a weekend so it really can be done!!