Pirate Birthday Party for Nathan (age 4)

In blogging about the parties from this past weekend, I realized I never posted about Nathan's party back in September! So here it is, a bit late. 

This kid is too cute. And so spoiled.

Funny thing about Nathan is that he always wants to be the bad guy; he always pretends to be Captain Hook, or Darth Vader, or a scary dragon when the kids play together. So pirates were right up his alley. (we're hopeful he'll grow out of this stage eventually.)

I have done pirate parties before, and you can check out the one for Joshua from several years ago, but to make things a bit more interesting we did completely different games this time around.

When guests arrived, we handed them a pirate patch and hat and balloon sword. We then played "Captain Hook says". Whoever was Captain Hook got to hold the hook and tell the other pirates what to do in a pirate voice.

Then we did some dancing to pirate songs. One of Nathan's favorite songs is "Roll up the map" from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. He wasn't too happy though that the other kids weren't following him and doing the actions to the song like they were supposed to. That is why he is sitting and pouting rather than dancing.

Oh boy, when are they going to yell? The suspense is so exciting!

The kids' favorite game was "Don't Eat Pirate Pete!". I bought some clipart online for maybe $5 and made this game board.  We used mini m&ms for the game pieces. To play, you place one candy on each square. The kids take turns being 'it'. One child closes their eyes while the others decide which picture is going to be "Pete" for the round. Then the child opens his eyes and begins slowly eating the m&ms one by one. When the child touches the candy in the square designated as "Pete", the kids all yell "Don't Eat Pete!" or in this case "Don't Eat Pirate Pete!".  The kids had a lot of fun with this game.

Don't Eat Pirate Pete!!!! We were really into it, as you can see.

The last game we played was to hunt for buried treasure. I had filled a container with rice and thrown in little prizes that Nathan had picked out; individually wrapped twizzlers, gold plastic coins, and ocean creature fruit snacks. I think we let each child find 5 or 6 things (although there was only 1 fruit snack per child).

We then had cake and ice cream. I made a simple cake this time around. I just made a 9x13 cake and cut and stacked it to look sort of like a ship. I put m&ms around the outside and stuck some parchment paper on a skewer for a flag. He thought it was cool.

After cake and ice cream and opening presents, the kids went home with their own laminated "Don't Eat Pirate Pete!" game board (I had stuck instructions of how to play on the back), a little bag of m&ms for playing pieces, and whatever treats they had found while treasure hunting. The whole party lasted just one and a half hours and the kids had lots of fun.