My oldest son wanted to do another Pokemon Party which I was unsure about only because he had just done Pokemon couple years ago. BUT he really wanted to do it again. And I had 2 weeks to plan it because I was thinking he would rather do it at the new Nickelcade… but Pokemon won out. I really only had 1 week from one birthday party to the next party, so I was limited on time.
However, all he cared about was having a Pokemon Battle.
So let’s get started. I needed to do things differently which shouldn’t be too hard since he is much older and a party for a 9 year old is much different than for a 6 year old. There was no Pokemon battles when he was 6!
Invitation. Ok, this was such a fun idea since we were inviting the boys to battle. I knew we couldn’t ask them to for sure give up their Pokemon in a battle, but that was part of the battle and that is what my son really wanted to do. To help with this, we gave each boy 5 Pokemon cards to bring to the battle. They were able to bring up to 10 if they wanted to. Some boys just brought their 5 and some boys brought in extra. I did make sure I gave them a note to remind them that they are going to loose some Pokemon, so to battle wisely. These are the invitations. I used Book Pockets (teacher here). Tucked inside were 5 Pokemon cards (and the note about possibly loosing them in the battle).
I did have a mom tell me her son was not wanting to loose the cards, but she told him he’d be ok and that was part of battling. He came with just his 5 cards and left with more he had won in the battle!
The first activity they did was trade Pokemon cards – if they wanted to! The boys did this for a good 20 minutes. Many just watched the others because they didn’t want to part with theirs.
We kept the party pretty simple: We put the ping pong topper out on a little table and let them battle out ping pong and when they won they won an energy card. We weren’t using those in our battle, but energy cards were definitely fun to win as extra cards to take home.
We also had the air hockey going in the playroom (that had finally got cleaned up!) When they won the five points battle , they earned a trainer card. Yet another card we were not using in our Pokemon battle, but just fun for the boys to win and get to take home.
These were so easy to have as activities before and after lunch. The boys just hopped from room to room while I prepared and cleaned up.
I made two pizzas because I wasn’t sure if Papa Murphies would make it the way I wanted. My husband was not impressed and said I should have just got Little Caesars and keep it easy. However, I can’t help but wanting to make everything cute and detailed. It’s the memories right? However, my son was so enthralled in the battle, he didn’t even come look at the pizza before I had to cut it up for everyone. However, I liked it. The other pizza didn’t have such brown cheese, but it was still in the ugly cookie sheet when I snagged that picture. Apparently, my ovens cook differently because they were in the same time.
Next, we did the Pokemon battle. We had to do the battle perfectly in the middle of the party because some boys were coming late or leaving early for basketball games. My oldest son wanted to explain the rules of the battle. He really wanted to do the correct attacks and math subtraction, but having 13-15 boys involved this sounded like it would take FOREVER and being they are only in 3rd grade (and some in 2nd) not the most fun for those that aren’t huge math brains like my son. He finds it easy to do math in his head and will often be faster than me. After much debate, I helped him see that if he wanted to do full battle he would need to decrease how many he wanted to invite.
Anyways, we just battled highest health. They sat on opposite ends of the table and shouted, “I choose you!” They put down their chosen Pokemon and highest health won the other Pokemon and that trainer got to keep the other Pokemon. My son explained the rules and called out trainers to compete. He was fair and made sure everyone got to participate several times. There was only 1 boy who lost all his Pokemon, so he came to see me and he got 5 new ones from my stash so he could continue to play or at least take them home.
One rule that my son tried to help monitor (although I think all boys were honest) was that once you BATTLED a Pokemon, it could not be used again. This way we were trying to prevent someone winning every battle just because they had a 100 or higher! When we gave out our 5 cards in the invite we gave two 50/60 health and two 70/80 health and one 90/100 health.
All the boys were engaged in seeing which Pokémons were competing and it turned out a huge success! Even with the crowd of boys we had!
As the party was down to the last minutes, I brought the boys upstairs (so I wouldn’t have to run up and down at 6 months preggo each time a parent showed up). Call me lazy… ha ha ha jk. While waiting we did one of my teacher grammar favorites: Mad Libs. The boys LOVED their stories even though I said they could only use fart and other similar things once. ha ha ha
My boys wore their Pokemon shirts (or at least one of a couple). We also had hats for my boys to wear and if I had planned better, I would have ordered all the boys some cheap ones as their take home gift. We did not have anything for my daughter to wear, so we pulled out her yellow tutu (from her 1 year old Halloween costume) and paired it with a darling shirt (that she refuses to wear usually). She had the touch of Pikachu with this cute outfit and she LOVED being dressed up.
I also had a Pokemon shirt (men’s shirt I bought clearance that I wore and it was plenty big to fit over my 6 month preggo belly). I also put on my cute Pikachu earrings that I was probably the only one to see. ha ha ha Just a little extra cuteness and over the top concept.
Pokemon Cake 2 – check it out. These are amazing!
Happy Pokemon Party!
