It didn’t take my stepson long to realize the benefits of having two “moms” to plan his birthday parties. Months (sometimes years) before his birthday, he tries out themes and comes up with two, one for each house. Since his mind frequently changes, I waited until May to make him commit to a theme for his mid-July party. And after watching his head spin with ideas, he finally settled on a Star Wars party.
We had finally gotten to know some of the other kids in our neighborhood so this would be the first party that wasn’t just our families, which consist mainly of adults. The thought of several elementary aged kids running rampant through our house caused me to break out in a cold sweat so I immediately decided that there must be some sort of structure to this party. It was time to step up my party game.
Since I’ve never actually seen any of the Star Wars movies, I turned to my trusty friend Pinterest to guide me. I immediately rejected any ideas that were overly complicated, needed special materials not found at the dollar store or could result in injury.
I hit upon the idea of creating a Jedi Training course and it ended up being golden!
Death to Darth Vader
I found a free clip art version of Darth Vader and then used a technique called tiled printing to print out a poster size version on my home printer. I gave each kid a container of silly string and let them attack the poster spraying him until their cans ran empty.
Yoda’s Challenge
I put yoga mats out on our lawn and had each child lay on their back with their feet up in the air. One by one, I placed tissue boxes (I shop at Sam’s Club so we had quite a few but really you could use anything
that’s fairly light) on their feet to see who could balance the most for longest amount of time.
Laser Beam Labyrinth
We set up two sawhorses and stretched paper streamers across to form a web that the kids had to climb through without ripping any of the paper.
Storm Trooper Shootout
I used empty toilet paper rolls and affixed pictures of Stormtroopers I printed out (yay for Google Images!). I set up a shooting range on a picnic table and let the kids have target practice with a Nerf gun to see how many Stormtroopers they could take out.
Light Saber Lessons
We made light sabers out of pool noodles and black duct tape. With 10 white helium balloons staked into the ground, the kids ran through and swatted at them with their light sabers so that none of the balloons touched them during the dash.
Dominate the Death Star
We created a Death Star piñata out of a beach ball and old newspapers. It needed 3 – 4 coats of paper to be sturdy enough and then we filled it with candy and hung it up. The kids each got to beat at it with a baseball bat until it crumbled and the candy emerged.
The games only took about 30 minutes total which was perfect considering the sweltering heat in mid July. The kids had a blast and the adults really enjoyed watching them participate!
Has anyone else ever created a Jedi Training course? I’d love to hear about your ideas!
