Explore, rescue, protect! An Octonauts party ...

Justin was five a few weeks ago and he wanted an Octonauts party.

I managed to get the invitations out before Christmas: I found a cute picture of the front of an Octonauts book and fiddled a little to come up with something I was happy with.

I was very late in organising the actual party (for me) and only sat down and planned the games the day before the party, although I had sourced the party bag goodies and party plates before Christmas (as I learnt to do after his very first birthday when I left it until after Christmas and snow meant the things didn't arrive in time!) 

Justin had 10 friends and the party was held at our local community centre (where we've held previous parties). I bought a blue net and some inflatable fish to decorate the room and we made some jelly fish out of plastic food cartons and plastic carrier bags.

We started the party with an Octonauts Creature Hunt. I was "forced" to play some of the Octonauts games on the BBC website to win some creature cards, which I saved and printed out. These were then hidden around the room  and each child was given a creature chart at the start of the games. Once they spotted the creature they then went to Sophie and her friends (the helpful big girls) to get the creature stamped off with a froggy stamp (the closest stamped we had to a sea creature!).

Next game was Fish Egg and Spoon Race. We have a great set of egg and spoons from Early Learning Centre and the children had fun running up and down the hall trying not to drop the eggs!

After that the children played Ball Pool Creature Rescue. I filled a giant bucket with ball pool balls and dropped in selection of sea creature bath toys. The children then had to reach into the bucket and pull out one of the sea creatures (without looking).

The next game was Musical Islands. We laid out large pieces of paper (the packaging saved from a recent Amazon delivery!) - one for each child. The children danced around the islands until the music stopped - they then had to stand on an island. An island was removed after each round and the child not on an island was out of the game. The last one on an island won.

This was followed with Calico Jack’s Treasure Hunt. I have been saving the plastic eggs from Kinder eggs for a very long time and I put a haribo sweet into each egg and hid them around the hall. There were enough for each child to find three eggs and two of these were large ones with a mini-packet of Haribos in.

The final game before the food was served was Octonauts in the Sea (this was a variation of fishes in the sea). The proper game works like this: set up a circle of chairs facing outwards and each child sits on a seat and is named either Captain Barnacles, Kwazi or Peso. A caller calls out one of the names and the children with that name get up and walk around the outside of the circle. The caller then calls different things:
- the sea is getting rough = the children start running
- tide turn = the children change direction
- shark coming = the children run back to their chair.
The last child to return to their chair is out and turns the chair facing inwards; they can play a version in the middle of the circle for fun.

In reality this proved a bit too tricky for 4/5 year olds and Mr Snowballs just got them all up at the same time and got them to run or change direction or return to their seats as per the game rules. They all had lots of fun.

I also set up a table with some Octonauts colouring as a quiet activity for those children who didn't want to take part in every game.

The party bags were just simple paper bags with a label for each child in the Octonauts logo. I found a font that is similar to the Octonauts font and used this (see here). They each got an inflatable fish, a magic fortune teller fish (remember those from your childhood?), an Octonauts colouring book (I saved the images from the BBC website and then printed them four to a page and stapled them into a booklet), and some sweeties.

Mr Snowballs excelled himself this year with running the games and all the children had a fantastic time - even the shy ones were joining in by the end of the party. And with all the help I got from my family (who are amazing) the party was a real pleasure to organise and run.

Next up, the cake ...

© 2014 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Happy Easter

Easter was so early this year that I didn't realise it was here until I looked at my calendar and realised that Sophie and Justin finished school the day before Good Friday!

I wanted to put a couple of decorations up and although I loved the eggs hanging from a branch that I put together last year, I didn't have time or inclination (the weather is just so cold here at the moment) to go searching for the perfect branch again this year. 

But a quick trip to our local garden centre, Squires, and I succumbed to a cute woven heart by one of my favourite home interior gift designers, Gisela Graham and I whipped up a cute decoration that I have hung by the front door - a little bit of brightness for a grey, chilly, snowy couple of weeks ...

Justin also had a Easter bonnet parade at nursery for the first time, so a few days before I pulled out a plain green hat and some Easter stickers and chicks that we already had. My only input was to stick a couple of feathers on the front and to provide the purple shredded paper for a nest on the top of the hat. Then I let him loose on it - it took all my restraint not to interfere and rearrange any stickers that I thought were too close/not in the right position but the overall effort of both of us paid off ... he won the prize for the best hat!!

© 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Easter eggs

I decided to make Easter eggs for family this year rather than buy them and found it all quite addictive.

Many, many years ago I collected coupons and sent off for some egg moulds which I rediscovered at the end of last year. I bought a selection of dark, milk and white chocolate and also some mini honeycomb and fudge pieces.

I wasn't technical in the making of the eggs (ie tempering the chocolate etc) as I worked on the principal that the eggs wouldn't be around long enough to "bloom". I melted the chocolate in the microwave and with a bit of practice I figured out how long to "zap" it for - several short bursts to the point where there were still some chocolate pieces that looked solid but with a bit of gentle shaking they collapsed into the melted chocolate.

I made a selection of all dark eggs (for dairy intolerant hubbie) and milk eggs for others. The fun bit was decorating the eggs. I made some mini piping bags from greaseproof paper and melted the white, milk and dark chocolate in the bags in the microwave. I then cut a small hole in the piping end and had fun making flowers, spots and just drizzling randomly across the eggs. When this had hardened I spooned in the contrasting chocolate for the egg and added either fudge or honeycomb pieces, both of which were delicious. When these had set I then melted a little more chocolate and stuck the two halves together to make the complete egg.

I was very pleased with how they came out ...

© 2011 Nicola Noble