November 17th--Erik's birthday party

Erik decided he wanted to have a "Solar System" birthday party. We had it at the church, which was incredibly convenient for us. I made his cake:

The Sun, Mercury (gray), Venus (yellow), Earth (blue), and Mars (red). I especially liked the craters on Mars and Mercury. I also made Earth and Venus the right relative size by starting with a cupcake, then adding a layer sliced off of another cupcake.


Jupiter and Saturn--the rings were my favorite!


Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (along with a plain cupcake for Anders, who didn't think he liked frosting)


We started outside in the parking lot, waiting for everyone to arrive by drawing planets with sidewalk chalk. Erik invited his whole class--half were able to come. After the first guests arrived, we moved into the classroom for a few projects. They made space-themed posters with various art supplies, and used clay to make planets, aliens, and spaceships.







After most of the kids had arrived, and most were done with their projects, they went up to the gym to play solar system games. Erik planned Solar System Freeze Dance; Asteroid Dodgeball; Black Hole Tag; and others I can't remember. While they were playing, I cleaned up the art downstairs.

I finished cleaning up at the same time as games finished upstairs. We then let each kid make "volcanoes" with baking soda and vinegar. It was a hit (and only a bit of a mess, since I had each volcano in a baking dish!); I ran out of a nearly-full box of baking soda, and had to run upstairs to get more vinegar from the church kitchen (there was only red wine vinegar, so our volcano experiment took on a pungent smell!).

Erik requested that the experiment phase be done, because he was ready to get on to the celebration! Everyone loved picking out which planet they wanted to eat. We also had ice cream and fruit, though the fruit was mostly overlooked in favor of sugar.

After cake and ice cream was the gifts. This is the first birthday party where we've intentionally put gift-opening as an activity. All of the kids enjoyed it, though.




After opening gifts, the party was done. Erik loved it--his favorite part may have been the fact that he was in charge, and he could give orders with no one telling him to stop! Our whole family enjoyed the party.