Pac-man Party -6yr- Pac-Man Pinata

When my almost six year old son decided that he wanted a Pac-man party this year, I had no idea where to start. You can't go to your local party supply store and just round up pac-man paraphernalia.  Maybe in 1985.  Once I got started though, the ideas just flowed.

We didn't need much in the way of decorations(just plenty of red and yellow balloons and streamers), since the games we stationed around the yard were bright and colorful and, of course, Pacman themed. I painted a Pac-man scene on a four foot tall sheet of plywood, and my husband cut out the mouths of Pac-man, Mrs. Pac-man and a couple of ghosts.He created a stand for the board and I made bean bags by filling sandwich baggies with dried peas and sewing them into felt squares with yarn. I hot-glued fruit shaped felt pieces onto the bean bags. 

Our other game was created by drawing 5 pairs of the "bad guy" ghosts on computer paper. I glued the ghosts to cardboard from cereal boxes, then laminated them to make them waterproof. Then I cut slits into yogut containers to make stands for the ghosts and filled them with rocks for support.  Then we postioned them on our picnic table in two identical groups. A few feet in front of the table, we lined the kids up in pairs.  Two kids at a time were given super soakers and they raced to shoot all their "bad guys" down first. My husband was smart enough to actually chain the water guns to a picnic bench so we didn't have to worry about loose water guns at the party. 

I also paper mached a pac-man pinata by using a blown up punching balloon for the base.  I used three layers of paper mache then bunched up yellow and black tissue paper to decorate Pac-man once he was dry. To avoid sugar I filled it with temporary tatoos, bouncy balls, rubber stretchy toys, a few other pary favors and fruit snacks.  This makes for a very heavy pinata, and yet it still stood up just long enough for all sixteen kids to get a couple good swings at it. My kids had so much fun helping decorate the cupcakes.  I just painted on the simple shape of Pac-man with yellow frosting and the kids surrounded him with fruit (Chewy Runts candy).

Our party lasted about 3 hours and kids and their parents are still talking about it.