Friday Emmalee had a fall party in her Kindergarten class. Somehow {I am still trying to figure out how} I ended up the party coordinator. I searched all over the internet for ideas and finally settled on a bit of a monster theme. We weren't supposed to do a Halloween theme per-say, but the monsters were quite fitting for the party without being officially Halloween. I found this Don't Eat Pete game online and ended up using the monsters for my inspiration for the whole party. They were just so cute. I first used the monsters to make cards to go with the game. {download HERE} These monsters are not all the same size, so I just cut them apart however worked best {start by cutting the blue guy out first}, then I cut blue cardstock to back them. I unfortunately loaned the cards and board out, so I don't have them right here to measure, but I think the blue cards were cut to 3.5" x 4.25"????? Basically, when I had the monsters cut out, I figured out who was the widest and who was the tallest monsters, then cut the cards 1/2" larger than those sizes. That way all of the cards were the same size, 'mkay? Since we were working with Kindergartners, I wanted to make it easier, or perhaps more random, which monster would be Pete. How do you play??? Put one piece of candy on each monster on the card. Have one child go out of the room while the others pick a card from the pile. Everyone else at the table sees who "Pete" is, then they have the child from the hall come back into the room. That child gets to eat all the candy on the card until he tries to eat the one on the monster named Pete. When he/she goes to reach for that candy, the kids at the table yell out "Don't Eat Pete" and the child stops eating the candy. His or her turn is over, the card is restocked with candy, a new child is picked to be the eater, and you begin again. The kids had so much fun with this! I made some mini cards {download HERE} to give to the kids as party favors. The file has them 4 to a sheet. Just print them out in color on cardstock and cut them apart. I put one card in a treat bag with two rolls of smarties to make sure the kids had all they needed to play. Emmalee, of course, came home and forced everyone in the family to play it TWICE with her before we even got to dinner. {Wait-a-second! She was just trying to eat more candy!!! (dawn of understanding)}. Next was probably my favorite station of the party though. We played Roll-A-Monster, cookie style! Madison plays this game as a drawing game with the kids she babysits. I thought it would be really fun to play it to decorate the cookies. You can get the game board with complete instructions HERE from HappyBrownHouse. I made these labels to go with the food pieces {download HERE}. I printed out that sheet, then cut the monsters apart making 2 3/4" squares. I cut the blue cardstock into 3 1/4" squares and used a glue stick to glue a matching set of labels onto both sides of the cardstock square {making them two-sided}. Here is what my pile of monster parts looked like... Here is what we used for each part: 1-eyes Decorator eyes {available in the cake decorating sections of Walmart and all major craft stores} 2-nose M&Ms 3-mouth Gummy Worms 4-teeth Candy Corn 5-arms Rainbow Twizzlers {cut into 2-3" pieces} 6-feet Sour Patch Kids I think this activity was a HUGE hit with the kids AND the adults alike. I also made smaller versions of this card as a favor... It is downloadable HERE. I printed it off in color, cut it apart, then put one in a treat bag with a dice {bought 10 in a box at The Dollar Tree}. I am not big on giving lots of candy at parties so it was nice to have favors that were activities more than junk toys or more sugar :0} Finally I made up some cards for a Minute-to-Win-It, Fall Party Edition. I found several good ideas online, but these are the few we chose to do: Leaf Blower- Using straws, see who can blow all their leaves to the other end of the table first. This didn't go quite as slick as I was hoping. I think it would be better to have a target drawn on your tablecloth and see who can blow scattered leaves all inside the "raking pile target" first. A target would work better with this game. We were working with Kindergartners. You gotta' know how to roll :0} Apple Stacker- Have five apples{or 10 and have two kids going at once} and give the kids a minute to see how many they can stack in the minute. This was a really fun game. It was pretty tricky, but the kids had so much fun trying. Believe it or not, this cute little bunny stacked 5 all by herself! Only one to do it too. "Mom, I think you have an engineer in the making right there!" The apples get pretty bruised by the end so don't plan on using them for anything else, or get wind-fall apples if you can so you aren't wasting perfectly good fruit ;0} Pumpkin Sweep- Have two mini pumpkins and two brooms. Let two kids race from one end of the room to the other sweeping the pumpkins from the starting line to the finish line. It sounds easy, but have you ever tried to sweep a pumpkin??? Not so straight forward, is it? Candy Toss- Each kid got a handful of small wrapped candies. They all had a turn kneeling on a chair and shooting their candy into a bucket a couple of feet away. When they have thrown all their candy they get to keep it all and put it in their treat bags. Spill the Beans-I couldn't think of a good name for this. I guess I should have called it Popping Corn or something. Basically, cut a slit into the side of an empty tissue box. Slide a belt or a ribbon through to make a belt to strap the tissue box to the child's waist. Cut the top of the tissue box off { I would leave a ridge if you can} and then put 8 or so ping pong balls inside. The child gets to jump and wiggle until they get all of the ping pong balls out of the box. It's kinda like popcorn, right? The kids love this one. The only problem was I put it on their backside and they figured out how to jump just right to pop all of the ping pong balls out at once. I think next time I would tie it to the front and leave just a ridge of the box top there so it is a little harder. Super fun! Fall for the Target-We placed two hula hoops on the floor. In the center of the hula hoop was a small square of paper. The original idea I saw was to have the kids stand on their chairs, hold fall leaves above their heads, one at a time, and drop them. You were trying to hit that square of paper as your target. Fall leaves never fall straight down, so I thought it sounded fun. When we got to school, the mom helping with that activity thought it would not be good to teach the kids they could stand on chairs, so she had them stand at the hula hoop. It was a little less effective, but still fun. I do think it is funny our "Fall Party" that was not supposed to be "Halloween-y" started off with a costume parade, not that I mind. What would Halloween be without a parade to show off the costumes??? The one other thing I did for this activity was make name tags. I stopped in at Micheals, Joanns, and even Archivers, a local scrapbook store that is simply fabulous, trying to find something to make the name tags cool. I had a heck of a time. The really lame thing about our marketing here in America is that by the time the actual holiday comes in a season, the stores no longer sell the supplies that go along with that holiday!!! Talk about frustrating. I didn't find hardly anything to help me with my name tags. Finally, I decided to make monsters to keep with the theme. I took the original pictures from TheTeacherWife's game and made them into silhouette files {with slight changes out of laziness}. I have those files HERE for you in my Monster Party folder on dropbox. I have one file to cut the monsters. I cut all of the monsters on one sheet out of 4 different colors of cardstock. The black mouths and pupils are all in one file to be cut out of black vinyl. You can change the cut setting for cardstock if you would rather cut out of paper and glue. It just seemed easier to me to use vinyl and have them already sticky. Just in case you don't know, I use my Silhouette blade on a 2 when I cut vinyl unless you have a lot of use on the blade that you are using. Then I bump it up to a 3 and even sometimes a 4. You don't want to start with that blade too high though, cause it can actually chip the blades if they are used at too high of a setting than recommended. Then you would have to buy an all new blade. I also have the colored iris' and spots {only for one monster, but I have enough for a couple if you want to put them on more}. I made 32 nametags and only needed a scrap of vinyl about 3x5" big for those colored eye parts, 12x6" for the black, and 12 x 6" for the whites of the eyes. If you don't have a stash of vinyl like I do, you can stop by the sign shop in town or a local scrapbook store and see if they have scraps you can have or buy. Anyway, I cut the monsters, layered the eyes and smile, and added the name tag. Ever since seeing Ashley's post about using the sketch pens, I have been giving it a try. I LOvE THeM!!! You put a pen into the blade holder on your silhouette machine, then highlight through the silhouette program all the parts you want drawn. You go to the cut menu {the little pair of scissors with dotted lines at the upper right hand side of the screen} and make sure all the writing parts of your font are highlighted to cut. Make sure any other parts are NOT chosen to cut. Here is what I do next... Adhere your paper to the cutting mat and load it into the machine, double check that all the parts that are to be drawn are highlighted to cut, and all the cut parts are marked NO CUT for now. Make sure you have the pen in the holder nice and tight, then go to the other cut menu, Third button over from the right that looks like a little cutting blade. There is a box about half way down on the right side now that says Blade and below that says Sketch Pen. Click on Sketch Pen, then click on cut. WAHOO! It is writing in pen for you!!! ***SOMETHING ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SKETCH PENS*** They do not fill in the font! If you are imagining the fat old bold faced font all filled in for you, you are dreaming. You can, however, purchase a "sketch font" from silhouette and have the font filled in with this cute sketchy look. If you want the fill filled in completely, you are gonna have to print it first, with registration marks, then load it into the machine and cut with the blade to cut the actual card out. How was all of that for spontaneous Silhouette babble??? Just to finish it up, when you are done with your sketch penning, DO NOT UNLOAD YOUR MEDIA! Just take the sketch pen out, and put the blade back into the blade holder. Go back to that cutting menu symbolized with a blade in the top right hand side, and click the marker back to BLADE. You will also need to re-open the cutting menu that has the little scissors, select all of your sketched parts, and click NO CUT!!! VERY IMPORTANT :0} Otherwise all of your words will be cut out. Not cool. Select all of the card outlines, and switch them over to CUT. Once you double check that everything is complete and correct, you just click on CUT once more {in that "blade" cut menu} and it will cut out your name tags or cards or whatever right where you have planned in your drawing. I LOvE my Silhouette!!! Anyway, that was a crazy little side road. Let me know if you have any questions. Maybe I will need to do a tutorial some time and show you pictures :0} Not today. I have to get cutting out more nativities. I hope you enjoyed learning about All The Little Monsters from Emmalee's Fall Party. Feel free to email or comment if you have any questions about that too!