Host the wildest kid’s outdoor survival party ever
Are your kids mad about Bear Grylls? Do the disgusting challenges of I’m a Celebrity make them squirm with delight? If the answer is yes, then what better theme for their next birthday party than SURVIVAL?!
Yes, yes, your kid would just burst with joy at the prospect of such a party. But where on earth do you start? Well, that’s where we can help. Here’s everything you need to know about hosting the perfect kids’ survival party…
Set the scene
Pair them up to apply each other’s war paint. The perfect ice breaker.
Image source: Shutterstock
Whether it’s in your back garden, at the local playground, in the woods or at the beach, this party has to be outdoors. Yes, even if it’s raining. There’s no way Bear would chicken out just because of a few raindrops.
Go raid the local Army surplus and dress your outdoor space with some camouflage netting, tarpaulins, and basher sheets to provide shade and/or shelter. Make any signage, invitations and place settings rustic and outdoorsy. Think chalkboards for signs, sacking for tablecloths and camo wrapping paper strung into bunting.
Provide camouflage face paint (or mud) for those eager faces. If it’s a sunny day, you could even supply green zinc sunblock (the type the cricketers wear) as protective war paint. Pair the kids up and get them to paint each other. Perfect ice breaker.
It’s challenge time!
Setting up the yuckiest, freakiest, muddiest challenges is the best part of this theme. Sure, the kids are going to LOVE performing them, but you are going to have so much fun setting them up!
We figure the best survival parties need four kinds of challenge: physical (tire them out); food (gross them out); skill (wear them out) and fear (freak them out). Split them into two teams to get that competitive spirit flowing and ensure that no one gets left behind.
Physical challenge - tire them out
Make your own obstacle course - the muddier the better!
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A survival party just wouldn’t be a survival party without an obstacle course: fun, energy-intensive and oh-so-easy to set up.
You can use anything: old tyres, ropes, ladders, sturdy plant pots, tarpaulin to crawl under. Combine this equipment with whatever you find in your party environment: climbing frame, steps, trim trail, trees, sand dunes, or rocks. Create a circuit, mark out the route, and time the kids as they go round. Team points for the fastest competitors.
Food challenge - gross them out
Okay so when it comes to the food challenge you can go one of two ways: real icky food or fake icky food. Your decision will come down to the age of your kids and what you think they can handle.
The real stuff is pretty easy to come by these days. All that shellfish that we adults love - oysters, mussels, whelks (all cooked to be on the safe side) - can be challenging for young tastebuds and you have to admit that the contents look pretty gross. If you want to go more exotic, just Google ‘edible insects’ and you’ll find a whole host of crickets, grubs, ants, and worse, packaged up and ready to be delivered to your door.
You know your kids better than we do. While the food challenge is supposed to gross them out, it also has to be achievable for at least some children. So if you want to play it a bit safer, it’s time to unleash your creativity. Sheep’s eyeballs (lychees), slithers of snake (grilled chicken) or rabbit droppings (raisins) come to mind.
Or try Annie’s cockroach shake recipe from AnnieThing for Food:
‘It contained apple juice, green food colouring, and melted marshmallows. With a plastic cockroach. Nice. Actually, it did taste nice…’
Skill challenge - wear them out
Steady, aim, fire! These target practice games are sure to get the competitive juices flowing.
Children of any age love target practice. Set up a target station and hand out toy weapons - sucker bow and arrows or catapults with soft ball ammo. It goes without saying here that adult supervision is key to making this challenge safe and fun for everyone.
Put older kids’ true survival skills to the test. Kirstie and Stuart from the Family Adventure Project suggest setting some real outdoor challenges, like ‘how to whittle or light a fire with a magfire tool, how to use a compass, how to purify water, how to put up a tent and use a campstove.’
Fear challenge - freak them out
The fear challenge should freak them out (in a good way, of course)
Image source: Shutterstock
Last, but by no means least, is the fear challenge. Duh, duh, duh! ‘What’s in the box’ is an absolute CLASSIC and you can make all sorts of gross-feeling objects from everyday food-stuffs to joke toys.
Annie from AnnieThing for Food put ‘a peeled banana, a peeled squashy orange, creme eggs cut in half, a toothbrush, and a human hand’ (her husband’s) inside her ‘shock box’. Each kid took it in turns to be blindfolded and guess what they could feel.
And finally, feed them
After all that excitement, the party is drawing to a close. Your final job is to feed those muddy, excited, exhausted and ravenous kids!
Cooking food outside is always a winner - bangers or burgers on the barbie, chicken and veg kebabs, you name it, they’ll eat it after the day they’ve had. The winning team gets first dibs on the grub.
They deserve a bit of sweetness after all their hard work. Keep the survival theme going by rebranding their favourite sweets as Lara from Adventures of a Mum did: chocolate raisins easily become ‘bear poop’ and strawberry laces bear a mean resemblance to ‘worms’.
Forget the cake and opt instead for s’mores. Michelle at The Purple Pumpkin Blog has a delicious recipe for this: ‘a gooey, melty sweet treat made with a roasted marshmallow and a piece of chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers’ (easily substituted for plain digestives).
Let the kids toast their own marshmallows on a skewer and assemble the s’more with the rest of the remaining yummy ingredients. For little kids, use chocolate digestives - just turn both choc sides to the inside and sandwich the warm marshmallow in between. Yum!
That's it! Job done. Have fun and please, please share your photos with us over on our Facebook page. We'd love to see your survival party shenanigans!
Go wild with Rex London
We’ve got a wide range of brilliant outdoor activities that kids will enjoy. From our nature trail range to traditional outdoor games, you’ll find something for everyone - making them perfect for kid’s parties. We’ve picked out some of our favourites:
From left to right: Nature Trail Compass - £2.95; Nature Trail Insect Viewer - £3.95; Nature Trail Binoculars - £3.95
From left to right: Traditional Wooden Boomerang - £4.95; Traditional Hoopla Game - £4.95; Catapult Toy - £2.95
