For my daughter's 11th birthday, we decided to host a Battle of the Decades. This party took a lot of planning and work by both the hosts and the guests, but we had a blast! Each guest gets a decade to represent, which makes the activities very fun.INVITATIONS: Each invite had a time device like the one on Poptropica's time travel island (my daughter loves the site, so we took some features from it for the party) and I used GIMP to point the arrow towards the left. In the box the arrow was pointing to, we handwrote the year the person would be playing. In the middle, we had the party info. We asked our guests to come dressed as if they came from their time period and to familiarize a bit with it. DECORATIONS: We had our party on a warm, sunny day, so most of the party took place outdoors. I made signs that stated the year (1910, 1920, 1930, etc.)and put a chair in front of the sign for the guest representing that time period to sit on. In the middle of the circle of signs (we called this our time machine so nobody would be confused)we made a mini stage out of a cheap black tablecloth from iParty and a big piece of wood. This would be used for some activities we would do later. GAMES: When all the guests arrived, we had our stage set up with a small table and two easy buttons from Staples. We began by playing Decade Feud- the teams were 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950 against 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. This game is played a lot like Family Feud,and for the questions, we used a history textbook our daughter uses for school.The members of the winning team got a fake 1.00$ bill (Monopoly money). At the end of the party, the girls can either get a bag of favors that we prepared for free, or pay the money" for other favors and put together their own treat bags. This is a fun tradition we have every year and so far it works out great! After the feud we made pita pizza out of pita bread tomato sauce cheese and toppings we set out for the girls to choose from. While we waited for the pizzas to bake we set out some toys from 1910 and 1920. We had tinker toys and a few skip balls for the girls to work with. They made sculptures out of the tinker toys and while they ate we put ribbons on the all-around best most original and coolest idea. These girls also received dollar bills for the favors. Then we had the girls show us their skip-ball skills. The girl who did it best received a dollar bill. Last of all we came home to begin the Battle of the Decades! In this activity we paired up the decades in order (1910 with 1920 1930 with 1940 etc.) and set out a few games for them to play. The winner moved up a level and the loser had to join the winner's team. Eventually we had 2 decades playing a timed game of Scrabble with the rest of the decades on either side. The winning decade got 2.00$ in Favor Money and the girls got sent to have cake. CAKE: Our cake was decorated to look like the Poptropica time travel device and pointed to a square that said "Happy Birthday!" ACTIVITY:After the Happy Birthday song my husband left to clean up from the Battle and set up for the Era Talent Show our next activity. We re-used the stage from Decade Feud and added a microphone for the announcer and singers. The judging panel included my sister a friend's dad and my husband. The girls were told they had 20 minutes to plan an act for our show that has something to do with their decade. They could borrow anything they would need and ask me for anything special if they needed help. We also had the girls come up with a group act they would do together. We had lots of fun seeing what they came up with! After they all performed we gave them each a prize (2 one dollar bills) and awarded the fifth fourth third second and first place ribbons my daughter handmade. After the show the girls chose things to "buy" with their fake money and parents came to pick up some of the girls leaving my daughter and her two best friends. They watched a couple of movies from the mid 1900's (Bye Bye Birdie and Annie) and went to bed. In the morning we ate pancakes and the girls went home. We had a great time with this party- we hope you'll enjoy it too!"