It’s taken me forever to get around to this post! I knew it would be a long one so I’ve been procrastinating!

Logan was the lucky recipient of 2 birthday parties this year. I didn’t want to add all the preschool friends to the neighborhood party, so we did his “usual” party on Saturday, March 6th and a playgroup party for his preschool friends on Monday, March 8th since that’s the only day they don’t meet for school.

After much debate, we settled on a Spy theme. The invitation, designed to look like a mini file folder with the words “top secret” on the outside, detailed that all guests were needed for “Mission Birthday Party” and would be trained to help solve “the case of the missing goody bags”

As guests arrived, we took their pictures in sunglasses and a knit cap. These were used to print up spy training badges. After each training activity, the kids got a star placed on their badges. After pictures, everyone assembled in the front living room for a briefing which included news that three spies had infiltrated the Houck Spy Training Academy. Their names: Victor Violet, Evil Dr. Green and the Blue Bandit. They had worked together to steal all the goody bags, but had left them in the training academy along with a bunch of clues. The kids were told that their ultimate goal would be to find the treats, but they needed some training first!

Step one (crafts): I printed some fingerprint cards from the Internet and the kids used different colored ink to take their prints. I also found kid-friendly examples of standard finger print types which I copied and put out with the crafts. There were magnifying glasses on the table which the kids could use to compare their own prints to the actual ones. The other craft was “decorate your own binoculars”. I found some pretty cool collapsible binoculars on Oriental Trading.com which actually work surprisingly well!.

Step two (bomb defusing): I made three different trails of yarn (in 3 different colors) with black balloons tied along them. The trails led up the front stairs, in and out of all the rooms upstairs, plus a few closets, and then down the back stairs to the basement. Each team had to follow their line and “defuse” (pop) the balloons along the way.

Step three (games): In the basement, I had set up 2 laundry baskets which contained different dress up cloths like hats, masks, sunglasses, boas, and capes. The kids were split into 2 teams for “the master of disguise relay race”. Each person had to put on 3 different things, run down and back, take off the cloths, put them in the basket and go to the back of the line. The next person had to wait until the child in front of them had taken off all the disguise items before they could start. The boas were especially popular since they were quite easy to throw on (moms were helping each team). We played spy music for the race like the themes from James Bond, The Pink Panther and Mission Impossible.

Next game - Pass the Password (aka grapevine). Again, the kids were in two teams, but seated in a circle on the floor. We gave the first child in each circle the sentence, “the secret password is…” and then a funny word like spaghetti or fun. They had to whisper the password around the circle with the last child announcing the password out loud. Aiden, the last person in one of the groups, announced at one point, “the secret password is…I don’t know”. :)

After a dinner of hot dogs and cake, the kids were split into 3 teams by age (2&3 year olds, 3&4 year olds and 5&6 year olds) for the final challenge: Mission Good Bag Recovery. Nana and I had made three different scavenger hunts tailored to the three different age groups. For example, the 2 & 3 year olds had clues that were mostly pictures while the oldest kids had rhyming clues. (I had walked randomly around the house a few days prior to the party taking shots of good hiding spots with my camera and then had the pictures developed for the little kids.) Each group was given a manila envelope with a picture of their particular “bad guy” on it and the first clue inside. Each clue in the hunt was hidden either inside of a balloon that had to be popped or inside of a white envelope with the appropriate colored finger print on it. The youngest group had to find clues with purple finger prints and pop any purple bombs (balloons) that they found along the way. The middle group followed blue clues and bombs. The older kids followed green. Some of the envelopes in each hunt contained puzzle pieces. Each team’s final clue instructed them to meet together in the front room to put the puzzle together. The message on the puzzle led them to Logan & Aiden’s “super hero spy closet” where daddy waited inside for the password “goody bag please”. He hammed up his role with a gruff voice that scared 1/2 the little girls. ;)

Here is the picture I took of Logan for his spy badge. I have to, unbiasedly, admit that he did the best pose!

Rather than post all the pictures individually, I made a little album of them below. Click “view full album” and then “view slideshow”

View Full Album