My son just started Kindergarten this year. What a milestone! I always told myself (and anyone else that cared to listen) that as soon as he started school and made friends, I was going to give him his first actual birthday party. This year was it, and boy did I throw a fabulous bash for him (if I do say so myself 
So first things were first, choosing the theme. I honestly forget how we decided the theme, but it was robots. No particular robot per say (I hate character themes quite honestly), so I had my creative work cut out for me.
I decided on this cake. This is the 2nd cake design I pulled from Better Crocker and eHow. Watching a video on how to make it was so helpful for someone who isn’t so good at it naturally like myself! I added my own touches too it. Here is how it turned out:
One thing you will notice in the photo is the arms didn’t withstand the test of time. I made the cake and decorated in the night before the party. I would recommend tying up the arms right before you unveil it.
Now, how was I to occupy 11 4-6yr olds while keeping within my theme of robots? The first plan was to give them a coloring sheet to occupy them as they arrive. Easy. J has loads of crayons, markers, and colored pencils to make this happen.
I was actually surprised at how into the coloring sheets the kids where. I had to stop them so we could move onto the next part of the party.
I wanted to have the kids make robot crafts. I looked up what alot of other people did, and none of them really jumped out at me. I liked bits and pieces from a couple so I simply merged them all together and made them my own.
First job, making the robot bodies. This was the most meticulous, time consuming, maddening part of the entire birthday party planning process. I hand cut, with a box knife out of cardboard, each part of the robot’s body.
To make a box out of cardboard, I put hot glue along the edge of one end, and attached it to inside edge of another. Continued the process until I had a complete box. The only good thing about this is that they don’t have to really look pretty.
Head: 2″x 2″x 2″ (LxWxH), cut out six 2″ squares
Body: 4″x 4″x 4″, cut out six 4″ squares
Legs: 4″x 2″x 2″, cut out four 4″x 2″ rectangles, and two 2″ squares
Next up, wrapping each body part with metallic wrapping paper. Again, another maddening process.
After all the pieces were wrapped, I hot glued the robot bodies together, and the kids had a clean slate to work on. I’m sorry I don’t have any photos of this in process to show, so hopefully I explained it well enough.
Now, onto what the kids would put on the robots to make them look more “robot” like. If I had really been crazy and took more time, I would have gone to salvages and pulled old computer parts for them to put all over. But alas, my insanity had a limit. I used anything that looked metallic or “robot” like, as well as a jackpot of old unused hardware I had laying around the house.
In order to make the party run as smoothly as possible, and figuring out how to wrangle 11 other kids with just 2-3 other adults to call upon, I had to think easy when it came to adhering the robot parts onto the robots. Solution: glue dots. Do they work all that well? Absolutely not. My thinking was if they really enjoyed the project, they could re-adhere the parts with something better when they got home. They kept the parts on long enough to make it through the party.
The only other problem with using glue dots was that having only 2 of us to give pass them around to the kids was a challenge. Thankfully J’s friends were unbelievably patient and wonderful, that we made it work.
Here’s the robots!
The other activity that I had planned, if they finished the robots early, was going to be a game of robot bingo. I found the bingo templates online, which I can’t seem to find right now. I was going to use washers as the bingo chips. The prizes included robot finger toys, transformer McDonalds toys (yes, I bought them from McDonalds), mini rubix cubes, and suction cup bouncy balls. Again, to reiterate the robot feeling, I covered the prize bowl in foil. I let the kids pick out prizes after they were done eating since we didn’t have time to play the game.
I had originally wanted to come up with some sort of robot like hat for the kids to wear, then I saw on this blog that they had the kids wear something over them that made them look like a robot. This was my spin on it:
I spelled out each of his guests names using nails and more hot glue onto black cardstock, both of which I already had! Viola, robot name necklaces.
I covered the tables with silver tablecloths, and got silver balloons. I found robot wall stickers I had gotten a few years back from another Dollar Store.
The party favors were another hand made item. I bought blue and red paper lunch bags and silver filler. In the party favors were metallic pencils, glow bracelets, metallic noise makers, pop rocks, airheads, and 3D glasses. I made the outside of the favors look like robots. I made the side antenna’s stay (mostly) sticking out by poking a small hole in the side, inserting the pipe cleaners then surrounding it with, yes, more hot glue. The top antenna stayed in place with staples.
All in all a very successful, creative, memorable, and completely exhausting day!
photo credits: Trish Hummer
