Saturday, November 12, 2011

Amazing Race Birthday Party


SEANS-Amazing-Race-logo

We love birthdays at our house! Even the smallest celebrations we try to make special! This year was my older son’s 11th birthday. Now, usually we do organized parties with friends every other year. (Even-numbered years to be exact.) This would technically have been his year ‘off’, just family, BUT, he was turning 11 – in the 11th month of the 11th year!! We couldn’t pass up this opportunity to celebrate – on 11.11.11! At 11am! To keep the party low on price but high on fun, I came up with “Sean’s Amazing Race!” The Amazing Race is one of our favorite shows to watch and I used to love doing scavenger hunts when I was a kid so I created an Amazing Race Scavenger hunt for my son and his friends!


Here’s how it works:

FIRST, find a good place where the kids can run around and solve “tasks.” We used a local outdoor mall.

Next, I came up with 11 tasks to go with the 11th birthday theme. PS: **Important** I went ahead of time to ASK the shop owners if the kids could perform these tasks in their stores. Most were very nice and agreed. I also reminded the kids to respect guests and stores in the mall during the race. (They all behaved really well!)

Here is a picture of the task card I made – I added an Amazing Race logo using my son’s name and made one card for each team:

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(The Amazing Race is copyrighted by cbs.com and its affiliates. I own no rights to the logo. Just love the show!)

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I then stuffed little bags with everything they needed for the race:

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I put money in the bag since some of the tasks required them to play video/arcade games. I gave a little extra ‘just in case' too.

Let the race begin!!

TASK ONE: Who has luck? Roll an 11 on the dice {provided in the task bag seen above} 

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TASK TWO: Are you patient? Ride the escalator two times – no walking ahead/skipping steps!

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And they’re off! 

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TASK 5 – Who can handle the heat? 

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Racers had to go to a local restaurant and ask for the “Habanero Shot.” {Their spiciest salsa!} This is where I would be OUT! I cannot handle the heat AT ALL! But the kids did great! :) I put that little shot glass in their bags too, to make it easier for the shop owner.

Where to next?

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TASK 7: Who’s got the moves? Play an opponent in the “In the groove” dance video game!

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This was one of my favorite tasks!!! Fun for the players and fun to watch! Some of the other tasks included unscrambling the name of one of the shops, writing down daily specials from one of the restaurants, and an “I Spy” portion!

I think one of the boys’ favorites was the last task: Whose got chops? 

First team to lick away the center of the Oreo wins!!

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Everyone left a winner! We celebrated at my son’s favorite place to eat. {Can you tell what his favorite restaurant is?}

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The goodie bags had a few things inside to represent the #11: Two sticks of gum, Twinkies packaged up look like an 11 and a brain puzzle:

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We had a great time! Thanks for reading about Sean’s Amazing Race! I'm also proud of my kiddo because he has decided to participate in The Birthday Project! Click here to find out how people around the world are giving back on their birthdays! Keep checking back on my blog -- I'll be posting what he chose to do for his birthday project in the next couple weeks!

And finally, to read a little birthday tribute I wrote about my sweet birthday boy, just keep reading through to the post below or click here.

Happy Birthday buddy! Love you! xo

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Thank you to Laurie Turk for featuring this party on Tip Junkie!



Sharing at the CSI Project: Kids Birthday Parties

Linking up this party here:
C.R.A.F.T.; The Gunny Sack; Tip Junkie;{Junk in their Trunk}

14 comments:

Mrs. Kelley Dibble said...

Parties are great anywhere, but I loved not coming home to the mess. The kids obviously had a blast! Good job making memories, Mom!

Karie @ The HoB said...

What a great party idea! Looks like everyone had a blast!! Have a great week!!

www.gallamorewest.com said...

Super fun!! Great job, Reannah! And Islands looks good too :)

{Junk in their Trunk} said...

What an awesome idea!! I am pinning this for the future!! Please come link up at our link party right now....junkintheirtrunk.blogspot.com/2011/11/link-it-up-wednesday_08.html

Unknown said...

What a great boys birthday party idea! I've done it on an adult scale which is an amazing amount of fun also. Great job.

Babblin' Brooke said...

How fun! I'm so excited to try this someday. Pinning it for the future. Thanks so much!

Jill Greenlaw said...

How can I get a copy of this?

Anonymous said...

I love this idea! You did a great job, and thank you for giving so many great details! I don't think I'd be creative enough to come up with that, so I appreciate that you shared it all!

Leanne @ because (i think) i can

icraft said...

great idea!! I am looking to do something like this for a youth group event...but not at a mall. Can you tell me what all of your task were??? thank you!!

Unknown said...

Wow! I love the details in this party! I bet the kids had a ball! Its sometimes hard to think of parties that are fun for older kids but you knocked it out :)

Unknown said...

MY wife also ran a party like this. The kids enjoyed it so much that we developed a "The Fantastic Race" app for the ipad, iphone and ipod. It is a configurable (if you want to) party organiser. If takes you through the setup, gives you a timetable and checklist of what to get. And most importantly runs the party for you.

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Drew Watts said...

Amazing Race Birthday Party! It looks outstanding. Such a cute theme idea! I loved goodie bags!! Deciding on a theme for the birthday bash of kids can be a challenging thing but I think that your theme would be loved by my son. His 9th birthday is coming and we are going to celebrate it in the presence of all our loved ones at one of the LA event venues.

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