There’s probably more Lego in our house than any other single thing, so when I asked Alfie what sort of party he’d like for his 7th birthday I was pretty sure what the answer would be. I decided to do everything myself this year rather than hiring an entertainer, so we booked our usual hall, and I started Googling Lego activities. There are a LOT of ideas out there. I narrowed it down to four main activities: Design a Minifigure, Decorate a Biscuit, Make a Keyring and Necklace and Make a Minifigure. I also had How Many Lego pieces in the jar? to keep the children amused while everyone arrived. In terms of decoration, I went for a red, green, blue and yellow theme, using coloured tablecloths with paper plates attached at Lego brick wall decoration as well as on the tables and I made a Lego ‘Alfie is 7’ sign. We also brought all our Lego storage bricks and piled them up.

We had 28 children there, so I divided them into four teams (red, blue, green and yellow) of seven for our first game. Each team was given a pile of Lego pieces that they had to transport to a piece of card their team’s colour at the other end of the hall. In relay. Using a spoon. This was hilarious. There was all sorts of ‘creative thinking’ going on – children sticking pieces together and balancing them on the spoon, throwing them in the general direction of the card from miles away etc. When all four teams had finally got all their pieces to the other end they were challenged to make a working vehicle as a team using all the bits they’d transported. We had made a track (board, paint and washi tape) with four lanes the week before and when the vehicles were finished, the teams raced them down the track – the winner was the one that travelled the furthest.

We then moved onto the main activities of the afternoon. I kept the children in their teams and each team went to a different activity table, where I had some brilliant grown-up helpers standing by. I was manning the Make a Keyring and Necklace table. I had bought lots of a certain Lego piece which has a hole at the top perfect for threading. If you attach two together you get a heart shape, so they could choose to make one of those, or create a monster, using the eyes I also bought from eBay, or just decorate with flowers and/or jewels. They looked brilliant and the children were thrilled. It was quite labour intensive as I had to use jewellery pliers to attach the piece they’d chosen to the keyring blank, but worth it.

 

I had the party boxes lined up and tagged with the children’s names, so when they had finished an activity they could go and put what they’d made straight into their box. My mum was, naturally, on the biscuit decorating table, along with an battalion of minifigure cookies she’d knocked up and an armoury of coloured icing, sprinkles, mini Smarties, eyes etc. The completed cookies were popped on a tray for the icing to set, then put in sweetie bags and added to party boxes. Make a Minifigure was pretty self-explanatory – I bought a bulk bag of minifigures, broke them up into hats and hair heads, bodies, legs and accessories and the children could choose the components to create their own character. This was much quicker to do than the other activities, so I had a big bucket of Lego for groups to play with if they finished before the groups changed over. Strangely, the most popular table was the Design a Minifigure craft (we have also been doing this at our pop-ups) which was the simplest to organise. I printed minifigure templates onto coloured card, spent £10 in Tiger on sequins, feathers, googly eyes and glue, broke out the felt tips and coloured pencils and let them go wild. The characters they came up with were fab.

Once again, my mum did an amazing job on the cake. I never cease to be astounded by what she can make from icing – in this case, Lego minifigures and bricks – and, as always, it tasted delicious. We used actual minifigures with tiny mugs as candleholders which worked really well. Top tip: We have started doing the singing and blowing out of candles before the birthday tea, so the cake can be cut and packed into party bags while the children are eating – makes it much more relaxed.

In terms of birthday tea, I kept it simple for the savouries – cheese sandwiches and pizza, plus crisps served in Lego storage heads. My dad made a brilliant Lego fruit platter and we had minifigure marshmallow heads, cupcakes with yellow minifigure silhouette covers on a Duplo plate, jelly in Lego colour cups and Lego brick cookies.

After the children had finished eating I awarded all them each a Master Builder certificate (grab our free template here) and announced the winners of the How Many Lego Pieces in the Jar? They were given a sweetie scoop and a bag to help themselves from the bucket of Lego pieces we used for the initial game. Once they had picked what they wanted, the other children were each allowed a scoop of Lego to add to their party boxes.

As I mentioned before, the boxes were largely made up from the things the children made at the party, but I also added a minifigure soap (sadly out of stock now), and a brick crayon and Lego-style brick badge (we sell them in packs of four or loose in multiples of 10) from Shop BG. I designed and printed my own invitations and signs, but since the party Claire has got all creative and we’re now offering Lego-inspired personalised printable invites and a birthday banner to buy in store.

I have to say this was one of the most enjoyable children’s parties to host and definitely the one I got most positive feedback about – from children and parents. Truly awesome.