Hawaii Survivor Party -10yr- Dress-up Cake

This party was for my twins' tenth birthday.  

INVITATIONS: Aloha! Are you up to the challenge? Come to our Hawaii Survivor birthday party and find out if you have what it takes to be a survivor!  The invitations included directions to the private island" (our house) along with the date and time.  We also invited the guests to wear tropical clothing if they wanted to.   

DECORATIONS: I decorated the party room like a tropical island.  I purchased most of my decorations from the luau section of Oriental Trading Company's web site.  I also found some tropical decorations at the dollar store.  In addition I made a large sign that said Hau'oli La Hanau which means Happy Birthday in Hawaiian. I made a pretend campfire where we would have our Tribal Councils.  I set up logs on our living room rug and then added orange and red tissue paper to look like flames.  If you don't have real logs you can roll up brown construction paper and crunch it a little to look like logs.  Turn on a flashlight and hide it under the tissue paper to make it look like the fire is burning. 

ACTIVITIES: The party guests were divided into two tribes.  We planned who was in each tribe ahead of time but we didn't tell the guests.  The birthday girls decided to name their tribes hawks and horses.  I looked up the Hawaiian translation for these words online before the party and printed the Hawaiian version of each tribal name onto a paper flag for each team.  As guests arrived we gave them each a flower lei and assigned them to one of the tribes.  The kids worked on decorating their tribal flags with markers as they waited for all the guests to arrive. 

GAMES(Challenges):  

1.When everybody had arrived we all gathered around the tribal fire so that the kids could guess their new Hawaiian names.  There are many sites online that allow you to type in a name and get back the Hawaiian version of that name so I did this for each party guest.  (Some names weren't in the databases so I just used something similar.)  I printed each Hawaiian name on a nametag.  For the challenge the kids tried to guess which nametag belonged to them.   For each correct guess the tribe gained one point.  After everybody had a chance to guess I made a big ceremony of handing out the correct nametags to each guest. 

2. Our second Survivor challenge was Coconut Bowling.  I set up plastic bowling pins at the end of our hallway.  Each guest had one chance to roll a real coconut down the hall to hit the pins.  The tribes got one point for each pin their tribe members knocked down.  (Suggestion you may want to have an extra coconut on hand just in case the first one breaks!)   

3. The Hula Hoop challenge was next.  Each tribe met to choose one person to participate in this contest.  The two contestants Hula Hooped at the same time.  The person whose hoop touched the floor first lost.  The winning tribe received 10 points.  (Note this took a LOT more time than I had anticipated.  Kids can keep that hula hoop going for quite a while!) 

4. The fourth challenge was the Dress-Up Race.  I put together a set of tropical clothing including a grass skirt and coconut bra (from Oriental Trading Company) a men's Hawaiian shirt colorful shorts and sunglasses.  Each child took a turn putting on all the clothing running to the end of our hallway turning around and running back and removing all the clothing.  The kids were timed and the tribe with the lowest time received 10 points.  (Note:  I didn't make the kids put the clothing on correctly.  This means they could drape the bra over their head or whatever they wanted.  The only rule was that the clothes had to stay on the entire time or else the child needed to stop and replace whatever fell off.) 

5.  Next up was a traditional Limbo contest.  I downloaded some tropical music and my sister and I held a broom as the limbo stick.  The kids danced under the broomstick as we kept lowering it.  The players were out if they touched the stick or the floor with any part of their body.  The last player to successfully make it under the stick was awarded ten points for his or her tribe. 

6. No Survivor party is complete without a Gross Food contest.  Our gross foods included the following:  Rat Droppings (chocolate covered raisins) Dirt (crushed Oreos) Worms (gummy worms) Sea Weed (cooked spinach) Cat Food (canned tuna) Spider Legs (black licorace) and Monkey Eyeballs (peeled grapes).  The kids tasted whatever they wanted and both tribes were awarded 10 points.  (This was just for fun not a competition.)   At the end of the party the members of the tribe with the most points were awarded I Survived certificates that I had printed on the computer.   

PARTY SNACKS/ CAKE: Our snack table was set up so the kids could munch on foods throughout the party.  I provided some tropical foods such as kabobs (little sausages pineapple chunks and cheese cubes) as well as the traditional kid favorites (chips crackers fruit and dip etc.)  We also had tropical drinks (Koolaid) that were served with colorful straws and cocktail umbrellas.  The cake was just a white sheet cake that I purchased from the store and decorated with frosting to look like a beach scene.   

FAVORS: For gift bags I used plain brown paper lunch bags labeled with the child's Hawaiian name.  I printed these labels along with some tropical clip art off of the computer and just glued them onto the bags.  I purchased most of the gift bag supplies at Oriental Trading Company for very reasonable prices.