Ninjago Birthday Party

My sweet Christopher turned 6 last weekend!  He wanted some kind of party that involved swords (*sigh* boys), and since his brother Joshua has a few ninjago sets and has been checking Ninjago books out from the library, he decided he wanted a Ninjago birthday party.  Did he have any Ninjago legos?  No.  Had he ever seen the Ninjago cartoon?  Nope.  But they have swords, they’re legos, and they’re ninjas; so it follows they must be cool and would make a cool party theme.  

This momma had to do some Ninjago research.  Apparently there are 4 main different colored ninjas - black, red, blue, and white - each with different Ninja skills - earth, fire, lightning, and ice.  There's also a special green Ninja who has the power of all of those elements.  And they do something called spinjitzu where they spin around really fast and make a tornado of sorts and then fight bad guys.  And they have a Sensei who leads them, named Sensei Wu.  Armed with this knowledge, and with plenty of help from my friend the internet, I came up with a party plan.  

Christopher also helped me get ready for the party.  He was very specific in how he wanted things (my kids are getting picky), and I had to steer him away from some of his more unusual game ideas, but he enjoyed being a part of the planning.  Here he is helping put Ninjago eyes on some party bags.  (click if you need some eyes to print out for bags or tootsie pops. My advice would be to print them out low quality so you don't waste a bunch of ink on something that will be quickly thrown away.)

The morning of his party it snowed.  It snowed a lot.  My 8 year old’s basketball game was cancelled that morning and I was afraid that parents wouldn’t bring their kiddos to the party.  I was really glad when everyone braved the snow to come, and glad no one crashed. 

He's looking at me as if to say, "seriously, you have
to take a picture of this too?"

When the guests arrived, we gave them Ninja headbands cut from green felt (so I didn’t have to do a stitch of sewing). They colored origami Ninja Stars I had made while we waited for the other party guests. They were then introduced to Sensei Wu for some Ninja training.  My patient, supportive, wonderful husband wore the Sensei Wu beard and led the kids through the games.  He’s a good sport.  

We played all the party games down in our unfinished basement, which is great for space and not worrying about things getting broken, but makes for ugly pictures.  Sorry. 

Look! The star actually went through the hoop!

The first training exercise was to throw the Ninja stars through the hoop.  They started up close and we moved them farther away from the hoop for each new round. 

spinjitzu!

Next up was some Spinjitzu training.  You know that game where you put your forehead on a bat on the ground, quickly run around said bat thus getting really dizzy and then have to run across the room?  Yeah.  We made them do that.  Spinjitzu!  We gave them balloon swords. (which by the way are really easy to make when you follow the instructions from the Klutz balloon book. It’s my favorite.) We split them up into 2 teams, gave them a bat and instructions.  After they had spun around the bat 3 times they were to run across the room, whack something with their swords, and then run back to their team so the next player could go. Fun times. 

Sensei Joshua

Next they worked on being quiet, sneaky ninjas.  We pretty much played “red light, green light” but we didn’t call it that.  One child was the Sensei.  The other kids lined up against the opposite wall.  They bowed to each other to signal beginning of play.  

Frozen Ninja Poses

The trainer would turn his back to them and they would silently creep towards him.  I told them they weren’t allowed to run and had to be as quiet as they could.  When the leader turned back around to face them they had to freeze in Ninja poses like they were statues.  If the Sensei saw them moving he/she could send them back to the wall.  The goal was to touch the trainer.  There was no winner.  Everyone got to have a turn being the sensei. The kids all had fun. 

Next we played dodgeball to work on our Ninja reflexes.  We pretended we were fire ninjas and the dodge balls were fireballs.  

We then headed upstairs to open presents and eat cake.  Christopher was very particular about what he wanted his cake to look like.  I showed him all sorts of pictures from my friend the internet of some really cute ninjago cakes, but he didn’t want any of them.  He wanted a cake with a lego tower on top that a ninja was trapped in with a bad guy ninja guarding it and a good guy ninja trying to rescue him.  He wanted chocolate frosting on the sides and green frosting on top.  I was able to convince him that white frosting on the sides would be good too, because I didn’t want to make two kinds of frosting.  As you can see, he got what he wanted.  It’s not a very cute Ninjago cake, but I had a very happy birthday boy.  

the party crew

We then played some “Sensei Says” (aka Simon Says) while we waited for kids to finish up their cake and then most kids went back down to the basement to throw dodge balls at each other while we waited for parents.  

scary ninja pops

When the guests left, they took home a party bag filled with chocolate lego minifigures (made from this mold), brick candy, ninjago lollipops (which are tootsie pops wrapped in streamers with eyes taped on and which idea I found on the internet), origami throwing stars (which they had colored earlier), green ninja headband, balloon sword, and a ninjago pencil.  

My little ninja was thrilled with his party.

Also, unrelated to the party and just some random bits of ninja news, Nathan says “inja” instead of “ninja” and it makes me laugh. And yesterday the kids all had their bathrobes on and were pretending to be ninjas; Maren was the pink ninja of love, happiness and peace (seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up), Christopher was the red ninja of truth, Nathan was the green ninja of justice, and Joshua was the blue ninja of trust. Fear the ninjas! And later in the day Nathan and Christopher were pretending to be ninja dogs.  I love my funny kids.