Easy and Fun Superhero Party Decorations and Games
Last month we hosted 20 mini superheroes for Aidan’s 4th birthday party. It was a Marvel-DC mashup with superhero fun from all over. Pin it for later.
He told me for weeks that he was going to be Batman for his party so I planned about half Batman party decorations and was open to any fun superhero party ideas for the rest, knowing he would likely change his mind. (He dresses like a superhero every day and changes his outfit 2-3 times a day.) Which was a good thing since that morning he decided he was The Flash.
Isn’t that cake amazing?! I debated attempting my own cake this year (I’m not a bad baker but my decorating game needs help) since I figured adding superhero logos wouldn’t be impossible. But I’m so glad I chickened out and asked our local bakery, Dream Bakery, to create this masterpiece.
Full disclosure, I was not excited about this party. I love superhero movies (Marvel can do no wrong in my eyes) but I just wasn’t thrilled about planning a superhero birthday party. At first. But just a few minutes on Pinterest and I was so pumped. There are
Superhero Party Decorations You Can DIY
My favorite part of the whole party was the cake table backdrop. Each individual item was very simple to create but together it looks so professional!
Gotham City Backdrop
For the city skyline, I got a black trifold foam board and using a ruler and pencil traced out some buildings. I recommend leaving a little space between the buildings so they really stand out. (I didn’t do this when I first started cutting and it didn’t look as good so I went back and added space.) Then cut along your lines with an
The loose buildings are different sized boxes I saved up over the weeks before Aidan’s birthday (cold and flu season meant most of them are tissue boxes). I wrapped them in black gift wrap and added more yellow paper windows. There are lots of options on Amazon for black gift wrap but I found the best deal at Michaels.com. I got and used almost four tubes. The shipping cost was higher than all four tubes but altogether still cheaper than anything I saw on Amazon! You could also spray paint your boxes if you aren’t a fan of wrapping.
I ended up with about 24 boxes, using a third of them on the cake table and the rest as a game outside where kids could build walls to leap over and knock down. I wished I had wrapped more larger size boxes since most of mine were pretty small.
The bats on the backdrop are repurposed from my Halloween decor. They’re black construction paper that I laminated. I stuck them onto the wall using my absolute favorite decor tool, Scotch Restickable Mounting Dots. I also hung up these superhero word cutouts around the main party room.
Superhero Birthday Party Games
I like throwing Aidan’s parties at our house so I can decorate however I’d like and save the rental fee a party place would charge (which I then hand over to an amazing bakery because I just can’t resist a pretty cake!). Because of that, we cross our fingers for good weather and plan lots of outdoor games to keep the house crowding minimal.
As I mentioned earlier, I wrapped lots of small- and medium-sized boxes for one of our superhero games. These I left stacked up for free play outside. Kids could build a city, smash through a wall, or practice leaping over tall buildings.
Make Your Own Superhero Mask
As a party favor and indoor activity, I cut out foam masks for each kid and set out bowls of foam shape stickers for them to embellish. I hand cut the masks myself and bought the stickers from our local craft store. I had wanted to leave out markers too so the older kids could really personalize them but decided against it so parents of smaller kids didn’t have to worry or watch their kid too closely at this table. You can download my mask template here. I hole punched the sides of the masks, intending to tie on the elastic, but ended up sewing it instead to make them extra sturdy. I cut my elastic to 10.5″ with about half an inch getting folded over the hole on each side when sewn. (Or the “two holes on each side” where I punched the first one too low…)
Batman’s Batarang Toss
Another game I’m nerdily proud of is my bat bean bag toss. Aidan requested batarangs at his party but I didn’t want to encourage kids throwing ninja stars at each other so I made felt bat bean bags and painted a “bat cave” to toss them into. Aidan still thought actual metal batarangs would have been cooler (“it’s okay if they’re a little sharp, mom!”) but he enjoyed playing with the bean bags even after the party.
For the bean bags, I cut out 8 bats from felt using this template, then sewed them together close to the edge leaving a 1.5″ opening in the middle for stuffing. I used old rice to fill these up but lentils or other small beans would work as well. It was a little tough getting the rice all the way into the wings until I started using a funnel I made with paper taped into a cone shape to get rice into both sides of the bat.
For the bat cave, I followed these instructions for the structure, then spray painted the front and sides with black paint. Then I added a coat of stone-look spray paint (similar to this) that I randomly had half a can of. I honestly have no clue what project I had it for but it sure came in handy here! You can download my bat cave sign here.
Captain America Shield Toss
We also had a Captain America shield toss. This idea is all over and there are lots of ways to do it. I really like the idea of setting up towers of cups for them to knock over but didn’t want parents to have to reset any of my activities so instead, I suspended a hula hoop off our balcony so they could throw it through there. It made a nice target but unfortunately, some of the kids thought it was a hula hoop for them to hang on so it didn’t stay up that long. Live and learn! They still had fun throwing the frisbees around after the target failed.
To make the shields I bought two red frisbees, printed Captain’s shield, and mod
Superhero Obstacle Course
We also set up a superhero obstacle course using pool noodles and hula hoops. The pool noodles we set up in arches using plastic knives as stakes because we didn’t have anything less weird to use as stakes and are industrious, haha. We taped 3 knives together for strength and I’m happy to report this hack worked pretty well! The hula hoops didn’t get incorporated as well as I intended – we just spread them out hopscotch style because by then I was thoroughly done with being creative. You can download my superhero training sign here.
We invited Aidan’s school friends as well as our own friends with older and younger kiddos so we had a wide range of ages. From what I could tell, everyone had lots of fun! The older kids started timing each other on the obstacle course and even helped fix it when younger kids ran into it or dislodged the pool noodles.
Despite my earlier
PS: Most of my signs are linked in the post above but if you want to make your own, I used this font and created the signs in picmonkey.com, where I added the other graphics like bats and dumbbells.
