Spiderman Party 4yr - Superhero Masks

My son is Spiderman obsessed so there was no question his 4th birthday would be a Spiderman theme.  It was held, like all our parties, in our backyard and he wanted a moonbounce.  I added to that a few activities I found on this site.  It was a great success with all the boys. We had about a dozen kids at the party.  The details: 

DECORATIONS:  For the front of our house I made a sign out of foam-cor with a picture of S'man and Welcome!  Swing on in to Jacob's Birthday Party.  The sign directed them up the driveway to our back gate.  On the garage door, next to the gate, we hung a huge poster of S'man and other Marvel heroes that says Happy Birthday.  I found it at the party store; it's called a Scene Setter.  

The food tables and two low children's tables had The Amazing Spiderman tablecloths, two round tables for parents had solid red tablecloths, a Spiderman birthday banner hung on the wall over the food tables.  We had red and blue balloons all around the yard, and a bunch on the table, attached to one of my son's Spiderman sand pails, filled with sand to weight it down. 

FOOD:  The food was pretty basic since I find kids don't eat much at birthday parties, even though it was at dinner time.  For the parents I had chips and dip, vegetables and hummus.  Then we had pizza for everyone.  Soda, water and juice boxes to drink. 

The cake was white cupcakes, frosted red with spiderwebs made by coloring chocolate glaze black, piping it on to the cupcake in a spiral, then dragging a toothpick through it to make the design.  The cupcakes were put in a cupcake display tree and the top one had a Spiderman candle.  I also made brownies, with red spiders in frosting on top (leftover from the cupcakes), for the parents. 

ACTIVITIES: 
1) The centerpiece of the yard, and the main activity was a rented inflatable obstacle course.  It's similar to a moonbounce, but open rather than enclosed and has more challenges than just bouncing  tunnels to go through, rails to climb over, ramp to climb up and slide to go down (or up my son said, Look Mom, I'm climbing up the wall just like Spiderman!).   It was a huge hit and even was in Spiderman colors! 

2) The children's tables were set up with materials to make superhero masks red masks I cut out of craft foam, with craft foam stickers, markers, and glitter glue pens.  The boys loved making them and wore them a lot during the party. 

3) After free play for a while (in addition to the obstacle course we have a swing set and sandbox) we had a web shooting game.  I had printed lots of pictures of bad guys from Spiderman comics and hung them around the yard.  Then, I gave each child a can of silly string and told them to go hunt the bad guys.  They all had a lot of fun with it and spent quite a while using up all the silly string.  A couple warnings only do this outside!  It makes a big mess.  And, some of the younger ones had trouble working the silly string cans so it probably wouldn't work for a 3s or younger party. 

4) After this was more free play and food and then a Spiderman pinata.  Following a tip I heard somewhere, I packaged the candy in the pinata into individual bags so everyone would get the same amount and cut down on the free-for-all to get to the candy.  Also, I put names on the bags so I could keep the choking-hazard candies out of the younger kids bags.  Then, we did the cake and people started to leave. 

PARTY FAVORS:  The favors included the mask, candy from the pinata, and a Marvel Superheros figurine thing that I got on super-after xmas markdown at Target ($1 each).  Each package has a paper envelope containing powder and 2 figurines.  You put the envelope in a bowl of water and it fizzes and foams, turns the water blue (very dramatic LOL), the envelope disintegrates, and when it's all done you fish the figurines out of the water.  Favors were put in plain white gift bags decorated with S'man stickers. 

My son helped decorate them before the party and that was a nice way for him to help with the pre-party preparations.