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My oldest son wanted to have a Nerf party after having attended a Nerf part a couple years back. I was on board. Sounds so fun! This is coming from the girl who said her kids would never play with guns and couldn’t even play lazer tag because it made me uncomfortable shooting someone. Here I am planning a shooting party! I guess I changed. (Yes, I have shot a real gun before though, but it wasn’t at a person so it was different.)
I wanted to make an extra fun invitation! Before invitations got passed out, I texted parents to confirm the kids could make it, but the invitations were going to be also their end of party gift… just given before the party. Then we put together black and blue bags. Half of the kids would be on the black team and half would be on the blue team. They would pick a color bag and that was their team. This way there was no hurt feelings with picking teams at the party.
Each invitation bag, had the details about the training facility. In the bag, they got safety glasses in their team color, an arm band and a wrist bullet holder. It was a fun gift! Picture below just shows the items. I didn’t give out full bags of bullets. These were glow in the dark bullets.
I am not a big decorator unless I get super excited about it with certain themes. This one, I did not really decorate, but I put a banner up in a couple place.
The plan with the teams was to have a couple activities where they earned points that was added together. There was no individual points, so no one would feel bad if they couldn’t do as good as others.
One activity was shooting point cans. The cans were randomly put on the table every time, so it wasn’t stressful. They got to shoot 5 bullets and whichever cans were knocked over were counted. (If they didn’t hit any in 5, then they got 5 more.) I had a couple come over at a time and earn their points.
Another game points earning I planned was floating balloons. There were 2 black and blue balloons worth 50 points, orange balloons worth 25 and a red balloon for 100 points. The trick with this one was they couldn’t hit the opposing teams color balloon because then they deducted their points.
If this is an activity you are going to do, then definitely don’t just TAPE the balloons down. Rookie mistake! Put a weighted something down as well and if you want to be sure it doesn’t move then also tape it down. We had two balloons go up with the kids running around shooting each other.
I borrowed the best HUGE boxes for this! The kids could hide behind them, run around them and crawl through them! It was a blast!
Instead of doing a pinata, the kids had to shoot at a bullseye to earn their candy. They had to shoot through the tissue paper. It was a lot harder than I thought. In the middle of the bullseye was a dollar bill. That was a fun surprise!
The NERF Cake was what he wanted and although it looked simple and not perfect he was very happy. I ordered black frosting from Sams Club, but that was WAY too much. The kids did have black lips which was hilarious. My son wanted the bullets shooting out like that. I was going to put a topper on that said Nerf, but I procrastinated and it didn’t happen. BLAH. Red candles for his favorite color.
When all the points were calculated, I announced which team, BLACK or BLUE, won. I told them that the “loosers” were to take the guns to go home and practice and the winners got the dart warrior tag. But I did say the winners got first pick and decide what they wanted to take.
We had NERF family shirts. I mixed up mom, dad and the boys on the two teams, black and blue. Then the girls were in pink because any girls that came wore pink and pink safety glasses.
