The Mediocre Mom's Guide to Greatness

Batman Party

Invitation:

My talented husband put together the invitations on Photoshop and I wrote the poem.

We included a Joker card that said I’ll See you there.  This was a little hint that the Joker was going to crash the party.

Activity #1: Super Hero Training Course (AKA obstacle course)

First they climbed over our BIG bean bag.  Then they crawled under the piano bench.  We had a different child pretend to be the Joker and trow my exercise ball at the hero.  Then the hero had to tie up the “joker” and knock down the “brick” (cardboard bricks) wall to save batgirl.

Activity #2: Joker Hunt

When the last hero finished the training course a joker card fell out of the the bricks.  It lead the kids on a treasure hunt around the house.  At the end they found the book “Batman Saves the Day” (enough copies for each child to have one, this was our favor).

Activity #3: Story time

My husband read them the book.  In the book it is Bruce Waynes birthday party and just before the cake is served the Joker crashes the party.  It was PERFECT for what we wanted to do.

Activity #4:  Fight the Joker

Just as the cake was about to be served the Joker (AKA my hubby who happened to dress up as the Joker for the previous Halloween) started laughing his scary laugh and then he came out.  All of the kids (without any cue) instantly attacked him.  Once the Joker had had enough of that it was time for cake and  ice cream.

Cake: Homemade

Growing up I thought that my friends were SO lucky because their moms bought their cakes.  My mom always made mine and now I would never buy a cake.  Homemade just tastes better.

I know how to make my own cake pans (learn more here).  So, I made a bat sign Ice Cream cake with cool whip frosting.  Here’s my TIP take it out of the freezer at least a half hour before you are ready to serve it.  It was rock hard and the kids could hardly eat it.

Gifts: Heavy heavy hang over

We decided to see how strong BatMax really was by playing heavy heavy hang over.  Now this game was a hard for a bunch of 5 year olds to grasp.  The kept yelling out, “Max this is Reed and this give is from me.”

If you don’t remember how to play here it is:  You blind fold the birthday child and then everyone says, “Heavy heavy hangover thy poor head what would you wish with a bump on the head?” just as they say bump one of the children bump the birthday child on the head with their gift.  Then the birthday child has to guess who bumped them and they can’t open the gift until they guess right.

Play time:

At this point Max had lots of new exciting toys so we opened them up and let the kids play with them while they waited for their parents.  (PS…this took a long time…I thought with 3 activities & cake & gifts that 2 hours would be perfect but 1 1/2 hours would have been better.

Decorations: Less is More

I don’t generally do a lot for decorations.  We bought some superhero plates etc and put up some streamers but other than that we didn’t do much.

Ideas: Transform your home into a bat cave…cover the windows with black paper, hang paper bats from the ceiling…cut out a bat sign that would fit perfectly over your largest flashlight and shine it on the wall in a dark room (the bat signal)….If you have action figures you can set them up and use them as a centerpiece.

Tags: batman party, cake, games, gifts, heavy heavy hangover, invitation