If you follow my blog you have read about how I try to raise my daughter to be strong. So when it came time for her 9th birthday party and she was determined to have a theme of rainbows, unicorns and science I had to get creative. Any one of those things could have been a theme on it’s own, but she wanted it all!
The only way I could think of to incorporate everything was to have her 9th birthday party be about the 9 things she loves! We set it up as a ‘Passport to Party’ where all the kids would get to do the 9 things Erin loves.
First things first. When all the kids arrived they got their passport that they could fill out and an apron. Since we would be doing science and making slime I didn’t want anyone wrecking their party clothes.
Slime
Will this obsession go away? For almost 2 years we have had a slime cupboard in my kitchen and I have to do constant checks to make sure my kids don’t have slime in their bedrooms, on carpet, in their backpacks, etc. This of course came after my son fell asleep playing with slime and it dried into his hair and took us 2 hours to remove it because he did not want to cut his hair!
We lucked out with this activity because our 11-year old neighbor is a slime expert! The kids broke up into groups and set about making slime that each got to take home a container of. For any parents not aware there is a WIDE variety of types of slime you can make. There is fluffy slime, stretching slime, glitter slime and more. This slime we added small Styrofoam balls to make it textured.
Bird Feeder
I have mentioned before that my daughter is a huge environmentalist and Earth Ranger. Since she loves nature and animals, especially feeding birds, she wanted to make bird feeders. We took toiler paper rolls that we slathered in peanut butter and the rolled in bird seed. Each kid got to take a few home that they could put in a tree in their front yard, community park or anywhere.
Bubble Wands
Bubble wands tied in 2 things Erin loves. DIY (Do It Yourself) projects and bubbles. I don’t really get it but she can sit for hours watching YouTube DIY videos… but then never does them. I don’t get it, I would rather watch one video, make the thing and then move on. Guess that means I’m officially an old lady complaining about the youngsters.
For this we used pipecleaners and every kid got to test our and make different shapes. They were then given a bottle of bubbles that they got to test their bubble wands with.
Orbeez Stress Ball
My daughter has ADHD and sometimes uses stress toys at school to help her keep her focus. Once thing her teacher gave her was play dough and playdough in a balloon to use as a stress ball. Of course she came home and jumped on YouTube to find videos and had to make one herself!
In her looking she found orbeez. What are orbeez you ask? Orbeez are tiny, absorbent beads that grow into squishy, bouncy balls when soaked in water. I found some on amazon and were surprised at how cheap they were. The bag is tiny and once they expand you see there is a lot in that tiny bag.
We added some orbeez to water in the night before so that they would be plump and fat for the party. The reality is that kids just loved playing with the orbeez. This alone could have been a good party station because they didn’t want to stop to make the stress balls!
But we finally got them to spoon the orbeez into clear balloons (so you can see the colors) and made stress balls. It was a bit harder to add the orbeez so we used funnels (the top of a soda bottle cut off) to put them in the balloons and that made it easier. 
Bath bombs
Now you might think she’s getting a bit girly-girl with this one… NOPE. She likes the science of seeing the baking soda reaction with the water and watch it fizz. Erin has eczema so bath bombs were something she knew nothing about until we got an activity in a STEM girls science package. It wasn’t long after that she made these that her aunt sent her some Lush ones and she is hooked!
We tried two different recipes. To be honest I have not included them here because they are really affected by how much humidity you have in the region you live.
The best thing about these bath bombs is that she enjoyed making them so much we made them as teacher gifts too! It’s an organic, homemade gift they will actually use!
STEM TNT
This was the show stopping activity of the party. I think everyone really like having to wear the safety goggles. Although we knew they weren’t in any danger, they liked the prospect of doing crazy mad science experiments!
This is the basic science experiment that you put mentos in soda and watch it explode. However, when you start planning you soon realize you have no idea how big a bottle or how many mentos to put in! So we turned it into s science experiement!
We got different sized bottles, different flavors of soda and different flavors of mentos. My daughter was such a big geek and so happy to teach the kids what a hypothesis was, how you set up an experiment and how you document your results. She had her papers to chart and her yard stick to measure. She even recruited older neighbor kids to help make sure the experiments were conducted properly!
But let’s be honest, all the kids wanted to do was watch the soda blow up!
Yes I am aware that in all the photos my daughter isn’t wearing shoes… I’m just happy she is wearing clothes!
Seed bombs
So Earth Ranger Erin has been wanting a bee hive for years. We have taken bee courses and after 3 years of asking we told her she could get a bee hive, then we decided to move so it was put off for another year.
That hasn’t stopped her love of bees, bee keeping or helping bees. So of course she had to have something that would help her yellow and black friends. Hence, the seed bombs. The girls all shredded paper and soaked it into water to create seed bombs.
The bombs needed to dry more so she brought them to her friends at school the following week so they could plant them with a bit of dirt to bloom into beautiful flowers that would nourish bees and help the planet.
Homemade Harmonicas
This one my daughter was excited about and had gone around the house playing her harmonica all week. When it came time to building them the kids were less then enthusiastic. Perhaps because we ended up doing it after the TNT it seemed a bit less exciting. She tried to get the kids to see that you can make them and create different sounds depending on how you blew into the harmonica, but the kids were not interested. I would say perhaps it would be better with a younger group, or a group that is more musically inclined.
Candy table
My daughter LOVES candy! In a previous life I was a baker and have always done big things for her birthday parties. For her 8th birthday she made her own cupcakes and set up her sweet table herself. She wanted to do that again for her 9th birthday, so I bought the candies and she set everything up. She did a great job! This is also where we tied in the unicorn part of the party!
Each girl got a bag to fill with candy. Everything was gone in seconds!
Punch Wall
Maybe it’s my days of watching Bob Barker (I know this photo is the ‘new’ Drew Carey). The punch wall was my FAVORITE part of the Price is Right. After years of doing birthday parties I started looking for things to do that took little effort/energy and could be re-used. Hence, the punch-wall was born in our house! I had the idea and thought they could use it for loot bag (a.k.a. candy bag) then I realized that with the candy table and all the activities there wouldn’t be anything left for them to get in the wall.
We came up with the idea to add in small squishies, bracelets, bouncy balls… things we were going to have on the candy table for kids to take. Instead of putting them on the table we saved the small plastic containers from the coin vending machines and put them inside those instead. The first child who left got to punch first. Then as kids left they were next in line to pick a hole and punch and they got whatever was in it.
This was the best part of the party! The kids talked about the punch wall for weeks afterwards!
Loot bag
So at the end of the party the kids not only had fun doing all the 9 activities, they got to take home all the things they made. So in their lootbag they had:
- Slime
- Bird Feeder
- Bubble wand & bottle of bubbles
- Orbeez stress ball
- bath bombs
- seed bombs
- Homemade harmonica
- CANDY!
- Added bonus: punch wall toy
Do you have any other STEM party ideas?? Let us know!
