My son was very into anything and everything military, so for his 5th birthday party, we had a military theme.
I printed the invitations on note cards preprinted with an American Flag on the front. The invitation read: Private First Class Evan Henry requests the honor of your presence at his 5th Birthday Party on Sunday, April 30 1500 hours to 1700 hours (3 to 5 p.m. civilian-time) at the Henry Family Compound (our address and phone followed) Also included the following: Uniforms are not required; however, recruits will be performing drills outside, so please dress appropriately. Birthday rations will be served. When the "recruits" arrived, they created navy ships from juice boxes and straws, which they were directed to put in our plastic wading pool. My husband and older son and I then led them through four "military objectives." Each child had a sheet that listed the objectives -- we put gold stars on each as they finished. Naval Outpost: each child had to use squirt guns and capsize one of the juice box boats in the pool Marine Field Training: we created an obstacle course around our swing set, which included a rope swing over "land mines" (plastic golf balls) and a water balloon drop from the tree fort onto an "enemy convoy" of Tonka trucks. Air Force Academy: under the direction of our 8 year old son, each child built a paper airplane and flew it. We had distances marked and noted each child's distance on their sheet. Army Corps: the "recruits" were divided into two teams to compete in "tank relays". We had cut the tops and bottoms out of cardboard boxes and painted them in camouflage colors (birthday boy helped paint). Believe it or not, the "objectives" only took about 1/2 hour, which left us with extra time after cake and gifts. We played several rounds of "tank, tank, grenade" (variation on duck, duck, goose) to fill the time. Lesson learned: Always have something up your sleeve to fill the time!!! Birthday rations were cake adorned with army men and juice. I used up all my creativity on the games!
