Incorporating your favorite reality television show into a birthday party theme for your child forces you to draw from your creative side. You have to be true to the show while balancing the resources available to the average family. It is simply impossible to take a group of kids to a remote island to ‘playSurvivor‘ for a day; however, it is possible to meet these kids at a local park and work with the outdoor environment available in your area of the Country.
I used to be a huge Survivor fan thus my motivation to throw the Ultimate SurvivorBirthday Party when my oldest daughter turned sixteen. Until her twenty-first birthday cocktail party, it was the coolest party ever!
We rented the pavilion at the park that was right next to the creek our kids love to play in. The creek was part of the inspiration for the party. If you do not have a creek to work with, children will use their imagination and you can turn a driveway or a parking lot into a body of water.
How To Throw The Ultimate Survivor Birthday Party:
1. Tribal Leaders
Name the birthday child and their best friend as tribal leaders. This will prevent them from teaming up and blowing away the rest of the children. They may moan and complain that they want to be on the same team, but once the game begins, they will enjoy competing against one another.
2. Tribe Members
The birthday child picks one person for their tribe. Their best friend, the other tribe’s leader, picks one person for their tribe. The two people who were chosen get to pick the next tribe members. The people who were chosen next get to pick the next tribal members and so on. If there is an extra child, that child gets to pick which tribe they want to be on.
3. Tribal Flags
Have some art supplies already prepared for each tribe to make their flags.
Prepackage equal supplies in brown paper bags and hand each tribal leader a bag. Send them off to different picnic tables or areas of the park or yard. Give them a time limit to come up with a tribal name and create a flag which must include their tribe’s name. A good time limit would be fifteen or twenty minutes. You want them scrambling to get done. Give them five and one minute warnings.
Once time is up, they must put down all their supplies and carry the flag to the judging area. Have the adults at the party judge the flags. You can give out two awards or judge equally on name creativity and flag construction. Award small prizes or candy to the winning tribe.
4. Immunity Necklaces
Prepare art supplies for the tribes to make immunity necklaces. They must make these necklaces exactly the way you have decided. You will include a cryptic riddle or detailed instructions (dependent upon their level of ability and the amount of work you wish to put into this aspect of the party). Prepackage the exact supplies needed to create this immunity necklace with the instructions in small paper lunch bags. If you want to make things a little more difficult, you can thrown in a few extra beads that should NOT be included in the necklace, but make sure you do the same in both bags.
Suggestions For Immunity Necklace Supplies:
Yarn
Ribbon
String
Wooden Beads of Different Shapes and Sizes
Metal Beads
Example Of What A Cryptic Riddle Instruction Could Be:
Use the yarn that is not blue or black and thread upon it the largest bead which is not green or red. Sandwich it with the beads of metal that do not have markings that should be in the sky.
(This would tell them to use the red yarn and put the blue bead in between the two metal beads that do not have stars on their sides)
The winning tribe is the first tribe to complete the immunity necklace correctly and award them prizes or candy. You should allow the other tribe to complete their project so that one of their tribe mates will be able to take their necklace home.
Have two stacks of wood beside the creek or make believe creek. Make sure these stacks have exactly the same pieces of wood. Planks of different lengths work great for this activity. You can thrown in a few logs to help with stability.
The goal of this challenge is to see which team can build a bridge across the creek and get all their members across without anyone stepping off into the water. You can allow the tribe members to be able to step into the water to build the bridge if you choose to, but make sure they understand that those people have to come back to the start and walk across from one end to the other as well. If anyone steps off into the water, they have to walk back to the start and try again.
The first tribe to get all their members across the bridge wins prizes or candy.
It is not important that their bridge be completely stable, just let them know that they will need to use their bridge for the next challenge too.
Part of the fun of this challenge is getting wet and you will find some of the children will jump right into the water to start building their bridge.
6. Water Brigade
Give each tribe a large funnel and a small bucket. Sand buckets are the perfect size.
At the beginning of each tribe’s bridge, place a large bucket (about the size of a mop bucket) full of water. The goal of this challenge is for the tribe members to carry water from their large buckets to their small buckets with a funnel. The first member of each tribe must simply carry their tribe’s small bucket to the other side of the creek by crossing their bridge.
Have each tribe line up behind their large buckets. Give the first person in each line the small bucket and the second person in each line the funnel. Countdown to “Go!”
The first person from each tribe runs across their bridge and places their bucket. Once they “High Five” the second person from their tribe, that person gets a funnel full of water and tries to keep it from funneling out as they run across their bridge to pour it into their small bucket.
When the second tribe member runs back across the bridge, they hand off the funnel to the third person in line who fills up the funnel and runs across to fill their small bucket.
The tribe that fills their bucket first, wins. You can draw a “fill line” on the bucket or have them overflow it to determine the winner. Give the winning tribe members prizes or candy.
This challenge can take a long time, so if they step off the bridge into the water, they just have to get back on the bridge to continue across.
When I threw this party, I said that they had to stay on the bridge to fill their small bucket, but if they stepped off, they just had to get back on. Some of the kids held me on a technicality and decided that since I only said that they had to stay on the bridge to fill their small bucket, they would fill their small bucket then jump into the water and run across the creek because it was faster to get back.
7. Winning Tribe
The tribe that won the most events becomes the winner of Ultimate Survivor and each member of that tribe gets a special prize.
