Knights Party - Indoors My son is very into King Arthur & castles, etc, so for his 5th birthday this year we did a Knights party. Invitations and cake plates were ordered from
Birthdayexpress.com, as well as helmets for the boys and tiaras for the girls (and a jeweled crown for the birthday King!). Harry Potter items work great with this theme, so we picked up
Harry Potter banners to hang around the room. To get into the party room guests had to cross the drawbridge, made by painting a large rectangle of foam core (cardboard would work, too) to
look like wooden planks and adding gray paper chains running from the edges of the board to the upper corners of the doorway. Red, blue and yellow streamers were hung everywhere and fluttered
nicely as people walked by. We started with a few games: Pass the Prince (Played like Hot potato but using a stuffed frog), Musical Thrones (musical chairs done in a circle). Then we
had our knighting ceremony on the drawbridge – the kids took turns kneeling as Daddy knighted each one and gave them their hats and a 'Certificate of Knighthood' (made on the computer with
shield and lance clip art and the child's name in scrolling letters.) We took pictures of each child using the digital camera and printed them to send home. The new knights were immediately
given a Quest: we picked 6 different places in the house to hide clues and then made up a short, simple rhyme to lead the kids to each one. We printed them out on the computer in an
appropriate font and let the ink dry well. Then we dipped each one quickly into lemon juice and put them in the toaster oven one at a time to 'age' them (Watch them in the oven! They should
yellow and crisp up nicely, but don't burn 'em!) Then we rolled them and tied a red ribbon around each one. The kids had fun following the clues that led to the treasure – their goody-bags,
of course! I don't like to give a lot of candy, so we bought the Knights favor boxes from Birthdayexpress.com, which included a few cool toys, and then I made very small, round sugar cookie
'coins', put them in bags and added those to the boxes as 'Coins of the Realm'.
For food we had pizza (not very medieval, but our small King could not be swayed to have chicken legs and potato planks!) and we made 'Merlin's Magic Punch' using Hawaiian punch, ginger ale and rainbow sherbet (which foams very magically when added to the punch!). Drinks were served in goblets (plastic wine glasses from the party store). A few more games after that were Feed the Pauper (split kids into teams of 2, 1 child tries to toss peanuts – still in their shells - into a paper lunch bag held by his partner a short distance away.), Garb the Peasant (Two teams are given identical sets of adult-sized clothes to dress one child in. Whoever gets their 'peasant' dressed first wins), Merlin Says (Simon says), Lance Toss (kids try to toss rings onto a plastic sword) and our favorite, Dragon Feeding Time (basically, pin the tail on the donkey, except we used a picture of an open-mouthed dragon and tried to pin cutouts of knights into its mouth. The kids LOVED it!) The cake looked like a castle (loaf cakes for the base, frosted ice cream cones for turrets and candies and pretzel sticks used as decorations) Harry Potter crest candles really added the finishing touch. He even had a cardboard throne to sit on during the gift-opening (from Birthdayexpress.com again!) that we painted gold and then asked all the guests to sign in colored markers as a memento. Whew! It was quite a party and even the adults got a kick out of the medieval theme. He got so many cool knights themed gifts he's thrilled!
