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My baby is finally six! To celebrate, we invited over three friends for Secret Agent training and cake. Now that my boys are getting older, I am enjoying planning parties that they appreciate.
For this party, my first stop was Pinterest. I was not the only mom to plan to a spy party, so there were a lot a good ideas out there. I pinned them on my Pinterest Board if you want to see the sources.
For invitations, I took a picture of my every willing model in his best spy pose and created a custom birthday invite. The invitation warned that “Dr. Tantrum” was out to ruin the party and secret agents were needed to help save the day. I included my phone number, but purposely left out the address to force parents to RSVP. I once had a birthday party where only two children had RSVP’d but over twenty showed up, so I have learned my lesson.
The decorations were very simple: I didn’t have any. Six year olds don’t really appreciate all the effort decorations take, so I used my energies elsewhere.
When the guests started to come, they were given a quick tour of the house and James showed off some of his toys. When everyone had finally arrived, we started the festivities. I gathered everyone, included older brother Andrew, and explained that Dr. Tantrum was out to ruin the party so we must train as Secret Agent Spies in order to stop him.
First, everyone needed their agent hat. In order to earn it, the boys needed to cross the “laser” obstacle course. I created the course with red crepe streamers crossing back and forth through the hallway. Every child had to cross the lasers without breaking any of them, retrieve their hat, and make it safely back. If they failed, they had to go to the back of the line and try again. After everyone had their hat, they ran through the lasers to destroy them.
Next the spy team had to work on their strength: out came the pinata. I couldn’t find a suitable “spy” pinata so we used a green dinosaur. The kids really didn’t care. Each child took several swings before the pinata fell to the ground, and then they all went to town trying to chop it open. I didn’t put candy in; instead I put spy tools, which included magnifier glasses, siren whistles, compass rings, click cameras and sunglasses. The kids eagerly grabbed their prizes and didn’t even notice there wasn’t any candy. I made sure everyone got at least one of each prize and they put them into bags with their names on them.
Next came a crash course on disguises. This did not go as well as I had hoped. I put mustaches inside of black balloons and blew up some extra empty ones. The plan was to have the kids stomp on the balloons and pop them to find their mustaches. Unfortunately, I always use high quality balloons, ones that can with stand a six year old’s foot stomping on it. We had to resort to pointy objects to pop them.
After donning the mustaches, it was time for graduation. Everyone was given their spy water guns and lined up for their pictures. Each boy posed like an agent and I used those pictures at the end of the evening for the thank you cards.
Then, suddenly, my oldest son Andrew switched his spy hat to his top hat and cried “I am Dr. Tantrum and now I know your secrets!” The other kids squealed and they started to play “Capture the Agents.” The agents would try to wrap Dr. Tantrum with left over streamers while he tried to capture them and send them to his base. It was crazy and more than a little loud, but the boys loved it and played several rounds.
When the pizza arrived, they were more than ready to gobble down the food. Then came the cake. It was a simple half circle cake with a cupcake on the top, but as soon as I lit the sparkler, one of the boys announced, “It’s a bomb!” James desperately tried to blow it out but couldn’t. He was looking more than a little nervous as the sparkler came closer and closer to the cake. Then my Dr. Tantrum step in and, with perfect timing, blew hard until the sparkler burned itself. I announced that Dr. Tantrum had stopped the bomb and saved the party. Everyone was quite thrilled and they had their fill of cake.
After the cake had been eaten, the presents were opened, and the boys had free play in James’ room. As the parents came to pick up their child, everyone was handed their hat, sunglasses and spy goodies, along with a thank you card with their picture on it. Overall, it was a great party and everyone had a fantastic time.
