Need Help with Indiana Jones Themed Party

I see that you have had a lot of responses, but, I thought that I would send you this site... it has given me a lot of ideas for parties and maybe you can find something for you as well. I was doing a Jo Jo party for my son and looked under circus as well as a Ariel party for my daughter and had to look up Mermaid parties. You just have to be creative as to where you look, but, I hope that it will help you out. http://www.birthdaypartyideas.com/html/party_ideas.html

Good Luck!

Hi M.-
I too love to throw themed parties for my kids birthdays. Orientaltrading.com is great for decorations, hats and party favors. I found familyfun.com to have great games and even complete party ideas. I also found that the games could be simple as hot potato, just give it a themed name, such as "hot boulder" from the movie. This trick works with the food too, you could serve potato chips and call them "insect wings". The kids don't always notice if everything fits into the theme, they just have a great time. Good Luck and have fun!
Annemarie Ryan

Have you sat down with a coloring book, reading book, etc. on the movie and then questioned him about what his ideas and how they would work? Sometimes we, as adults, forget to get their ideas and make it much more work than it needs to be. He might be happy with a tent for he and his friends to play in in the backyard and fake spiders being thrown on the table around the food and serving items.

There's nothing better than a party where "there isn't anything out there for this theme."

I can't tell you how great it is to hear that you're onto something that requires imagination and resourcefulness! Kids who don't get totally sucked into all the stuff that's marketed to them don't need much to truly be happy - give them a great hat that you've distressed with grease and jungle vines, etc. Give them a giant "wrecking ball" of a pinata (you can make this yourself quite easily). Make their goodie bags out of distressed, torn shirt material with a string tie at the top and put a baggie of gummi bugs and worms and stuff in there - creepy eyeballs from the dollar store and such.

And the obstacle course is a great idea - make sure all kids are told to bring a spare set of clothes and to wear ones that can get messed up - because that obstacle course should require some mud, for sure! A scavenger hunt is another great idea - maybe with a map that's worn and has crucial bits missing - maybe each kid has a piece of it so they have to work together. And what they find could be great or funky - a hollowed out book with something inside that would thrill or something cool like a pair of binoculars!

Good for you for having some real fun with this stuff - he and his little friends will never forget this piece of actual, get dirty, go outside, play with the kids and never look at the t.v. or gameboy childhood!

By the way, you could serve cake in half coconut shells or on large leaves or something - don't give them the luxury of forks unless it's part of their 'survival kit' - the ideas are endless! Cheers, T. B.

I would suggest you watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and possibly the Last Crusade. Maybe actually seeing the movies will give you some ideas.

The Temple of Doom is the one with the monkey brains and eye ball soup (yummy). One of the dishes was a snake (or eel) that was cut open and live babies came out. You could so something like that with gummy worms.

Definatley try to find an Indiana outfit for your son to wear, or at least the hat.

Depending how big you backyard is, and obstacle course would be good idea. I believe both The Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade had some good obstacles that Indie went through.

Good luck, sounds like lots of fun.

Dear M.,
What about chilled "monkey brains" or candy bugs and snakes to eat? Remember that gross out dinner scene from the Temple of Doom?
A game could be a treasure hunt with parts of the house or yard set up as parts of the world. The treasures could be gold candy coins or books on archaeology.
What about a game where they try to outrun a "giant boulder" made from a big exericse ball?
Party bags can contain exotic items. Toys from other parts of the world. Try rice candy. The paper melting in the mouth is such a treat for little ones.
For decor get placemats with maps on them, hang maps on the wall, travel posters of India, Mongolia, Egypt etc.
Your birthday boy could be Indy and wear his hat.
What a fun time you are going to have!
Light and Love,
C.
One more thing...the dollar store is a great place for party shopping. They often have foam hats, rubber snakes, plastic or candy bugs as well as plates, cups and decorations. Have fun!
http://www.questexperiences.com/quest2/portstoadventure/i...

You should google Halloween recipes for snakes and bugs and stuff like that. It's been a while since I"ve watched one of the movies so i'm not of much help to ya. Hope this helps,
W.

Wow... I have benn thinking about this for the last hour trying to come up with some stuff. I keep thinking about the one that they eat monkey brains. Not the best for a birthday party. Maybe lots of candy bugs, If they are into the monkey brain thing than you could do the Halloween trick of having them stick there hands into stuff they can't see and telling them they are gross stuff. Like cooked cold pasta being brains and wet grapes being eyeballs, spegetti being worms.
you could make a funky colored punch and call it something from the movie.
If I think of anything else I will post again.
L.

Kabob's with chicken and pineapple would make a nice main course. Bowls of trail mix would serve nicely as a snack. Have fun!

M.,
So on the invites, you put on there for them to dress up accordingly. And maybe instead of regular goodie bags, make them little belt sachels like Indie had for all his little cool tools and stuff.
Serve dirt cake with Gummy worms and stuff in it. It is SOOOOOOOOOO easy to make. Throw some chocolate coins in and around it and I think you can get little candies that look like jewels. Maybe some little spider rings.
Have a treasure hunt for the kids. That way they can fill thier own goodie bags instead of you making them.
If you need any more ideas, e-mail me... ____@____.com
Good Luck!
R.
One Woman Spa
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do you have any sculls from halloween for decoration? lots of halloween stuff could work for this if you have it. maybe do teams of three or four and do a scavenger hunt looking for the golden statue (like the first movie) or do a treasure chest. the tiki torches and tent are perfect.

you could do something like spaghetti in a bowl for worms or peeled grapes and say they're eyeballs, jelly is brain and blindfold the kids and have a treasure in there that they have to fish out.

i did an army party for my son's 6th bday years ago and we did an obstacle course and all the kids thought it was the best part of the party. we had a rope tied to the tree and they had to scale this 3 foot wall and then from the wall swing over a moat with the rope. we timed the boys and the kid with the best time got the prize. you could definately do one with an indy-theme. gosh, i want to go to this party! it sounds like so much fun!! hope these are good ideas!

Two words: Spiders and Snakes. Get a bunch of rubber snakes and make a snake pit (2nd movie). Each kid can bring one (or more) home. Make sure you have rubber trantulas (2nd movie as well) in the goodie bags and a lasso made of rope. You could also request that kids come garbed in "indy attire"-- tan, khaki. Not sure, ut oriental trading may have some inexpensie "felt-type" hats. I know I saw a bunch at the costume store in tukwila when I was there last month.

Maybe you could Try Jello as "chilled monkey brains" or make your cupcakes look like big beatles. Also, snakes are always in his movies.

hi M., have you thought about making indiana jones style bags, which could contain some sweets or teasure map, these bags could be made out of paper and some string, and could be fun for finding treats hidden around the house or garden?

I'd go bug. And snakes.

Remember the movie with the ditzy blonde and the elephant? She and Indy were served dishes of bugs by the villagers and she about freaked. (Of course, they were also served monkey brains - which really creeped me out! Eeeewwww!) I'd hit up the dollar store for plastic bugs and plastic snakes and Google for recipes that feature bugs. (Bugs on a log is the only one that comes to mind: celery sticks with cream cheese or peanut butter topped with raisins or dried cranberries.)

Check out eBay to see if anyone is selling Indy action figures or anything like that. (I bet the birthday boy would LOVE Indy's fedora! I can't imagine you won't be able to find a cheap replica of that darn hat somewhere!)

Ummmm. How about plastic goblets for cups? (a la The Last Crusade . . . I loved that movie!! Sean Connery is the best!) Maybe that could be an Ebay or dollar store find?

A tent is a good idea. An obstacle course could be fun - but it sounds like it'd be a lot of work.

I'm thinking about party games and my brain is a bit too numb. I remember they had to jump on the correct letters in the Last Crusade. Didn't they have climbing in another movie? Not sure if that would work for a 7 year old. Do you have a sand pit, or somewhere the kids can dig? Indy is an archeologist - so maybe burying "treasure" for the kids to find would be fun!

Good luck with the party. Sounds like a LOT of fun!!!

I don't even remember Indiana Jones very well, but a couple resource and other ideas.

I did a Google search on Indiana Jones birthday party and found:
http://www.questexperiences.com/quest2/portstoadventure/i... - on e-book for $9.95 that promises hundreds of ideas. Might be worth it.

Found this article on what was done for an older man's ideas - might spur some ideas (I liked their invitation idea!):
http://www.partypop.com/Themes/BRTH0038.html

Kids LOVE scavenger hunts - do a scavenger hunt and at the end have little treasure boxes with their party favors. You can get them anywhere - party stores, etc.

Try orientaltrading.com - they have so much really cheap stuff, from party supplies to favors to craft ideas. Search jungle - I found a bunch of stuff. Not necessarily exactly right, but you might find something. I bet they might even have some kind of jungle vines you could buy to decorate with. I know they have blow up palm trees.

Dress your son up as Indiana Jones - get him the khakis, hat, a pretend whip, etc.

You probably can buy some Indiana Jones posters to decorate the party. Then your son can hang them in his room. Here's an Indiana Jones shop online - http://shop.indianajones.com/?rid=CPC

Oh, and you can use the poster to play "Pin the Fedora on Indiana Jones" or something like that. For my son's Seattle Mariner's party, we had a poster made and laminated of Kenji Johjima (his favorite!) and made little baseballs with each child's name on them and they played "Pin the Baseball on Kenji."

Get fedoras for all the guests.

Get a CD of the theme song and play it at the party.

The web is full of ideas and resources if you are creative about how you look. I'm sure you've already done a bunch of that though.

Just some quick thoughts - I have to get back to work!

Indiana was always looking for an archaelogical treasure, the children could "hunt" for the treasure and "find" the goodie bags you usually give the kids at the end of the party.

Definitely do some kind of treasure hunt/scavenger hunt. Wasn't Indiana Jones an archeologist? Why don't you give them a map, like in teams, and have each team find some old "bones" or something burried in the sand/dirt. Also, wasn't it in Indiana Jones that they had this awesome mud slide scene? Do you have a slide? Maybe fashion it up as a jungle slide and put streamers or something that appears to be vegetation that kids can slide through as part of the route in the scavenger hunt. As desserts, you could hide candy bones in chocolate pudding with crushed up oreo cookie on the top. Have you done a google search on birthday ideas? There might be more interesting ideas out there. Also, another thing you could perhaps do is have the kids make their own maps and then have each kid hide an item, make sure that they put them on the map and then trade maps. (Instead of you doing all the work). I think also you could have roasted marshmellows over a fire and tell stories, that seems Indiana Joneish. Good luck! Sounds like a ton of fun to me! :)

So I really don't remember that much about the movie except that they were looking for treasure. For my son's 6th b-day we had a super hero party. All the boys came dressed as their favorite superhero...we had spiderman, robin, superman, red power ranger etc. We put them through a series of "challenges" like...plowing through a wall of boxes, shooting silly string at a joker poster, hot potatoe with a cryptonite stick (glow stick) and a show us your signature move for the video camera. This was all to prepare them for the finale...rescuing the cupcakes from Miss Evil and her minions...a neighbor girl down the street. It was a battle of epic proportions and one of the boxes of cupcakes got a little shaken up, but it was awesome. The boys still talk about the party and it was 6 months ago. And for thank you's we made copies of the video with some fancy editing by my amazingly creative husband. I hope this gives you some ideas...if you like them you can tweak them to Indiana Jones!

Hi M.!

Fun! I have a few ideas ... Food wise, have you ever heard of "dirt cake"? It's basically layered cool whip, chocolate pudding and mashed up chocolate wafers (or oreos) -- but the hidden SURPRISE ... gummy worms! Kids, especially boys LOVE this dessert, plus its so easy to throw together. You can make it ahead of time and then put it in the fridge and keep cold. Or, you can put it in individual clear cups with some worms showing thru and maybe one coming out of the top thru the whipped topping. (Think Indie and snakes ...). Games ... I think an obstacle course is a great idea -- anything with ropes, even tug of war would be fun at this age -- maybe with water for them to fall into on the one side (depends on how messy you want them to get). Also you could use a rope to "lasso" things ... also you could have "creepy" things put in containers for them to identify (kind of like we use to do when we were young at Halloween parties) ... the thought being that Indian Jones has to enter places where he doesn't know "what awaits him" ... I would look for cookie/snack ideas that are shaped like spiders or snakes -- that should be easy to find. How about a TREASURE HUNT? You could hide things (whatever) and put them in small brown bags and paint them gold (or to look like Indie's treasures) and put gum or cheap stuff in them ... gold coins ... and have a treasure hunt with clues -- kids LOVE that!

Hope these ideas help! Theme's are so fun ... I have teenagers now and they still enjoy a themed party once in a while!

Blessings to you and your family,

T.

Not sure when your party is but apparently there's the official stuff from the new movie available May 15th:

http://www.partyamerica.com/product/birthday+parties/boys...

This sounds like fun! For food, what about things like chicken skewers, pineapple, pulled pork - Hawaiian style food? I would definitely get some plastic snakes to use as favors and decorations. You could do a ring toss around some tiki heads...

Check out OrientalTradingCompany.com - they have a ton of fun, inexpensive party supplies.

Hi M.,
I have a few ideas, how much room do you have outdoors. How about some muddy relays, buried or hidden treasure hunts? They could find things like skelletons an dino's.

J.

Hi M.,
I just found this website by doing a search:

http://www.questexperiences.com/quest2/portstoadventure/i...

Good luck with your party. I'm sure it will be so much fun!

Family Fun has a jungle-themed party:

http://familyfun.go.com/parties/birthday/feature/famf0105...

Have fun!