Play: Lego Themed Birthday Party

My son turned six a while ago, and since he is a major fan of all things Lego, we decided to throw him a Lego themed birthday party. When I first started looking around Pinterest and the web in general, I felt really overwhelmed by the Lego parties I saw described. I mean, most of these people spent more on party favors than I did not my own child's gift! But, with some careful planning, we managed to have a great Lego party without blowing the budget.

Lego Birthday Party box:

The first thing I did was to purchase this Lego Birthday party kit. I thought $20 was a good price for this, especially since it included 10 Lego people and the regular price for Lego people is at least $3 each. We used the invitations included in the box, but since the designers seem to be unfamiliar with how the US postal service works, I had to provide my own envelopes (the included invitations were post cards, but did not provide a space to write the recipients address). The kit also included thank you notes (properly designed) and a neat pop-up card for the birthday child.

Source

Decorations:

We kept our our decorations fairly simple for this party, but I did come up with one neat way to hang some Legos. I attached some clear packing tape to a window I have hanging on the wall, and then stuck some Legos to the packing tape so that they looked like they were suspended in mid-air. My son enjoyed helping to decorate the table by setting up a few of his own Lego displays, and it was great way for him to be included in the party prep. I also stuck some Legos in our clear liquid soap container, and while they looked neat during the party, they have since sunk to the bottom and I have yet to remove them (3 months later!).

Food:

I served some chips and healthy artichoke dip along with some fruit for snack, and for dessert I made some yummy chocolate cupcakes. I didn't feel up to trying to make a big Lego shaped cake, so I instead I set the cupcakes together and "wrote" on them with candy Lego bricks. They were a hit! I also took the straws off of my juice boxes and wrapped each box in construction paper. I cut circles out of coordinating colors of craft foam and taped them on to make Lego brick juice boxes.

Games:

Brickmaster Says:
Just like Simon Says except it's Brickmaster Says instead. Warning: if you let little boys be in charge of this, you will end up with bathroom related actions...

Minute to Build it:
For this game I gave each child a big handful of Lego bricks and set my stopwatch for a minute. The kids had until the timer went off to build the tallest tower they could (the tower needed to be able to stand independently). This worked better with the children who were ages five and above.

How High Can You Go?: I got out our big box of Megablocks for this game. I began by having the children each add a block to the tower one a time, with the goal of seeing how high we could make the tower. It ended up that they didn't have quite enough patience for that so they kind of all added blocks at the same time. They were very excited when they had a get a chair to climb on in order to continue their building. And of course it was also exciting when the tower fell down!

Lego Figurine Bingo:
I found this great Lego Bingo game over here, so I printed it out and cut up the little cards prior to the party. We used Lego bricks for the kids to cover up each figurine on their board as it was called out. They really enjoyed this game and I liked that was something I could save for my boys to play again later.

Lego Comic Builder:If your child is at all interested in the Lego city sets, you may have noticed the directions come with little comics in them, along with a web address were you can build your own comic strip. My son has enjoyed using the Lego city comic builder to make up his own stories in the past, but for his party I created a special Lego comic adventure to read to him and his party guests. In the story I made up, some bad robbers stole a Lego set he had received for his birthday and the police had to go and get it back. Very exciting stuff!  My son thought it was great that the story had his name in it and referred to his new Lego cabin set. (Unfortunately the Lego website seems to have taken the city comic builder down, but there is a Starwars themed one here.)

One page of my Lego comic

Build an Animal:
This was more of an activity than a game.  I asked the children to each make an animal out of the Legos, and when they were done they shared what they had made with the group.  Our animals included a cute alligator and a giraffe at the zoo.

Favors:

For favors I attached a bag of Lego brick candy to the birthday figurine that came in my party pack.

I hope this gives you some helpful ideas if you are planning a part for your own Lego fan!