Spiderman Party 5yr - Web of Toys

For my son's 5th birthday, he wanted a "Spiderman" themed party.  First, we ordered invitations, napkins, plates, balloons etc. from Party Express.  

DECORATIONS: I located a picture of spiderman, and drew/painted him on 24x 30 foam core board which we hung as a themed decoration in our patio area where the party took place. On another outside wall, I hung a giant spider web {which we use for halloween} and a spiderman glove and assorted webshooter toys.  I made balloon centerpieces with mylar and colored balloons which we ordered, using lots of curling ribbon to hide the ugly brick bases used to weight the balloons.

ACTIVITIES:  We first made placemats with spiderman stickers, cutouts from extra invitations and from spiderman valentines which the kids glued onto red construction paper.  I had written each childs name in glitter glue on clear contact paper a few days earlier so that it was dry and could be adhered to the red construction paper without smearing.  The kids and their parents decorated their paper and then their parents "laminated" their construction paper placemat in clear contact paper which I had cut to size.     

We had lunch right after our placemats were finished.  WE had a spiderman themed ice cream cake before the sand activity listed below.           

Another activity near the end of the party was to dig through a brick made of sand and wax to expose a plastic figurine. Each child got their own "brick" and a metal spoon to excavate their surprize.  This was somewhat time consuming to assemble:  I heated wax in a tin bucket in a pan of water, and stirred in sand slowly enough to coat the sand thoroughly. When the sand looked saturated, I poured some into a clean empty milk carton, then inserted the hard plastic figurine (ariel, minnie mouse, dinosaurs, etc.) and covered with more sand/wax mixture.  The kids needed some help excavating their toys but they enjoyed the activity.  It would work better with a slightly older group. 

GAMES:  For each guest in attendance, I wrapped a toy, wrote the childs name on it, and attached about 20' of yarn to the toy.  We then attached a tape to the end of the yarn with the same child's name.  We hid the toy, wrapped the yarn around everything in a corner of our patio thereby creating a giant "web" which the kids untangled.     

We hid many bats and many spiders, split into teams, and had each team find as many bats and spiders respectively in 2 minutes.  The team with the most bats or spiders won.     

I spray painted a giant cardboard box black and hung bats inside for our bat house, and another giant box red, cut out windows and called it superman's phone booth.  We split the kids into teams, gave one team 2 10" foam batman designed squares, gave the other team 2 superman squares, and had them step only on their squares to the others hideout and back as a relay.  {The cardboard themed boxes are always a hit and lots of fun for a moment in between games.)     

I taped a giant spider web in colored duct tape on our patio with as many points around the edge as guests.  On each point, we placed a foam square with a spiderman design, the bat squares from the relay, the superman squares, each including a shape such as star, parrallelogram etc. We played the spiderman theme song, and the kids walked aroung the web. When we stopped the music, each child stepped onto a square, we spun the spinner   and the winner was the one on the square which matched the shape on the spinner.  We contined until everyone won a prize. (This game reused the relay foam squares, and required making a few more foam squares. 

I drew a different shape on each of the squares, and made a spinner from a piece of cardboard and a plastic game spinner from a child's game. I split the spinner into the number of guests, and drew a shape on each section.) I made 2 targets, split the kids into teams, and they each took turns shooting silly string webs at the targets while wearing a spiderman glove.     

We purchased a ready made pin the spider on spidermans chest game which was a lot of fun. I scanned and printed a large picture of spiderman on my computer, mounted it on posterboard and cut it into as many segments as the number of guests.  I hid the "puzzle" and each kid found a piece and they worked together to put the puzzle together.           

My son and all of his guests had a terrific time.