Yes, that’s right – an undersea science party. The theme requests from Alfie are pretty specific these days! This one was basically fuelled by his inability to decide between his love of Octonauts and his obsession with science experiments.
For the science bit, my first port of call was Science Boffins, a company that provides entertainers to come and do exciting sciencey stuff at children’s parties. I must admit, I was initially worried about 20 plus four and five year olds sitting still for an hour of what was effectively education, but from the moment he handed out bright orange prism glasses, Boffin David had them eating out of his hand. They learned about static and molecules with balloons, about states of matter and, of course, chemical reactions. Alfie was asked up to help a few times, which he loved, as were a few of his braver friends. The most spectacular experiments were undoubtedly the elephant’s toothpaste and the Coke bottle explosion outside (sorry to the poor cyclist who nearly fell off his bike in shock). The parents seemed to enjoy the show as much as the children and everyone is still talking about it in the playground two weeks on. I’d definitely recommend for a quirky twist on children’s party entertainment.
We decorated the massive hall with a sea of blue and turquoise balloons (the giant ones from Tiger were a HUGE hit), streamers and handmade paper pom poms, plus I finally invested in one of the fantastic Make Your Own Word Banners, £10.50, Molly-Meg, that I’ve been eyeing for ages. My mum, once again, excelled herself with an Octonauts cake, featuring three of the Meomi mariners, brown sugar sand and yoghurt raisin pebbles, while Dad constructed two impressively toothy watermelon sharks, filled with fruit. Mum also made rainbow fish cupcakes, sea creature cookies, octo(cake)pops and oyster shell biscuits, complete with edible pearls. We had dolphin-shaped sandwiches, starfish snacks and crudites served in starfish chip and dip dishes.
In keeping with the theme, Alfie wore a Boden t-shirt, from £15.30, featuring scientific equipment with his La Loi Cosmos leggings, now £20. For the party bags, I tried to combine the undersea and science themes with either a Litmus testing or chromatography kit from the fantastic resource Science Sleuths, from £1.50 per kit, the Science Boffins prism glasses, a Wild Republic sea creature and a packet of fruit Sea Shapes, as I don’t do sweets. We labelled the bags using Yellow Moon scratch art bookmarks, £2.99 for 12 – Alfie scratched on the name and drew details on each one. Alfie proclaimed the party to be his best ever, so that has to be good. I only wish I’d seen these fantastic science cups and straws from Little Lulubel, £5 for 12, beforehand. Oh well, next time.
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