Friday, February 24, 2017

Rock / Geology Themed Birthday Party!

Last December we had a party for Sam's 9th birthday, and being the rock hound he is, he of course wanted a ROCK theme!!  Despite the lack of rock themed party supplies available on the market, I definitely had fun with this one!!

Activities:

I set up a couple activities on the kitchen table for the kids, although the grown-ups got into it as much as the kids did! There were supplies to make pet rocks (pipe cleaners, paint, google eyes, pom poms, glue), and I also found some cool rock themed line art online to print out for coloring sheets!  We had pages of fossils, crystals, giant agates to color and a maze! Every kid also got a little geode to bust open, which Dad helped with in the garage. ;-)

Pet rocks, coloring sheets, and break-your-own geode!
Some of the many rocks made that night!

Decorations:

I did get a front loader balloon, but they just don't have "rock" balloons out there!  Being from Minnesota, the pinata is a Lake Superior agate of course! That was a simple one to make...just your classic paper mache over a balloon.  I punched it in a few places to make indentations while it was still a little wet, then added more layers to make it dry that way, and painted. 

I made the big "9 Rocks" sign and little rocks with a sheet of fluorescent poster board and some black poster board from the dollar store.  For the "Rocks" I just sprayed some random spots with silver spray paint to get a rocky texture, and then cut out the letters.  All the scrap paper I just made rock shapes, and then taped them all around the house!

Food:

For the cake I made a gold pan dipped in the water.  This was a fun one...I had some shiny gold sprinkles, and also used some yellow rock candy for gold.  For special treats I found some rock candy on Amazon, some loose crystal rock candies, and some chocolate rock candies.  I got a set of sand shovels to use as scoopers.
Edible rocks!

Goodie Bags

I can't seem to find a pic of the goodie bags.  But, each bag had a geode to break, a few cool arrowheads, some fools gold, a rubber ball that looked like a rock, Pop Rocks, and a rock candy on a stick!

It was a really fun time, and a great theme...we have a lot of rock lovers in our family!!

The following month was Toby's art themed party, which I'll blog about next! Stay tuned! :-)