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Survivor Party -16yr- Magic Shoe Chalenge

June 2010

Katherine in PA/USA

Special Mention

Survivor Party 16yr: My sister turned sixteen in December, but she wanted to have an outside party so she threw it in the spring.  She chose the Survivor theme because she wanted something different and even a bit competitive for her Sweet Sixteen.  

INVITATIONS:  Friends were invited to come to our house to participate in Survivor: Kishi Island, a one-day Survivor episode.  They were told to wear beach clothes and running shoes.  RSVP by May 12th and the party was on May 22nd.  The Survivor logo with Kishi Island put on it completed the invitation.  The party started at 3:30pm and ended at 10pm.

DECORATIONS:  Leis were all over the house and outside.  Balloons with the team colors were placed on the mail box and all over the house.  Grass skirts outfitted the tribal council area and the scoreboard.  A decorative pineapple was placed on the table.  

ARRIVAL:  People arrived between 3:30 and 4:00 and made up their name tags as Shannon (sister) had friends from all different classes.  They were then taken to the tribal council area (lawn chairs arranged in two areas as to hold two teams).  Once all participants arrived, Jeff Propst (played by myself) came out and announced the teams: Purple and Green and handed out the bandanas.  The birthday girl was not placed on a team.  She would be the reward in the first challenge.  The scoring system was explained:  5 points for each member of the winning team for each win in challenges and 3 points for each person on the losing team.  Then they were told to elect a team captain to start the first challenge.

ACTIVITIES:

Challenge #1:  Magic Shoes:  This activity was meant to be a team building activity so people could get to know one another better.  The objective was to get all team members from one side of the yard to the other while following a few rules:  The Magic Shoes (we used necklaces) could only be worn by each person once.  When they had the magic shoes on they could use their feet to get across, but only the person wearing the magic shoes could have their feet touching the ground.  The magic shoes could not be thrown across the yard they always had to be walked back.  The teams figured out to do wheelbarrow with one person holding two people doing the wheelbarrow.  This activity took about twenty minutes.  The winners took Shannon and five points.

Challenge #2:  Blindfold Challenge:  The team leader went to the top of the swing set.  All the other members stood on a rug and put their bandanas on as blindfolds.  The leader was to direct one team member at a time to go to one of the five different team boxes throughout the yard and bring back the puzzle piece inside while avoiding obstacles.  Once all five puzzle pieces were retrieved, the team members were instructed to take off their blindfolds and work on the puzzle.  The puzzle was the Survivor: Kishi Island logo.  

Challenge #3:  Marathon challenge:  A three part challenge.  For this one each win earned three points and a loss earned one point.  This whole challenge took about 25 minutes. Part #1:  Obstacle course:  The teams chose four people to participate in this part.  The obstacle course consisted of two balance beams, lots of foldable tunnels and frog jumps.  The team that had the shortest run time of all four people won that part of the challenge. Part #2:  Human Pyramid:  The first team to make a human pyramid and have one of my parents take a picture won.  This went surprisingly fast.  By then the teams had bonded so well that they were very fast. Part #3:  Word Scramble:  For this one, there were brown bags labeled one through nine throughout the yard with two letters in each:  one for each team.  One at a time, the survivors ran out and tried to find a brown bag with a number on it that they did not have yet.  As each came back they put the letters in another paper back and checked off which number bag they got.  Once all nine letters were retrieved, the two survivors who did not run the obstacle course set about unscrambling the word and taping it to their paper.  One team accidentally left some letters in the bag so they had some issues for a while, but after a few minutes they unscrambled the word:  Challenge.

Challenge #4:  Tug-of-war:  As we did not have a long enough rope to do the full two teams at once, we made into three stages.  All the girls from each team went up against each other.  Then all the boys went.  For the tie breaker, each team was told to pick one boy and one girl to compete.  All the boys loved this event and the girls even showed a competitive side in it. After four challenges it was time for tribal council.  Once all were seated, they were told that instead of voting for someone to go off the team, they would be voting for their Most Valuable Player.  We set up voting booths using wooden ice buckets as the vote holders that looked remarkably like the one in the show.  After all voted, I arranged the votes and read them allowed.  Each MVP was given a lei and three points.  All that received any votes got one point.   Dinner was served consisting of the traditional barbeque type foods.  We got fruit and vegetable trays as well.  Everyone enjoyed the chance to hang out and chat for a while. 

Challenge #5:  Treasure Hunt:  Each team followed a series of clues to see who could find the Hidden Immunity Idol (a tiki cup) first.  To keep teams from just following each other, I made up the hunt and started them in different places with the same end destination. The clues gave a riddle, word puzzle or simple directions to get to the next place where they would find their next clue.  One girl arrived right before this challenge on crutches.  Her team had a lot of fun pulling her in a wagon from place to place.  As this was right after dinner, each team had to walk the entire course.  This took about 20 minutes.

Challenge #6:  Survivor Auction:  This worked much like it does in actual Survivor.  Each person was given $300 in fake money.  Items were introduced and the bidding started.  Items included different candies, $5 gift cards, nuts, silly string and a bag of really big marshmallows. Some items were covered so survivors bid on unknown items.  First covered item was a Starbucks gift card and the second was a bag of toy cockroaches which got everyone laughing.  This went over well, especially with the silly string.  There was a battle in the backyard and everyone got a piece of it.  For every hundred dollars left over the survivor got a point.

Challenge #7:  Survivor:  This was an individual challenge.  We took this challenge from a grade school gym game.  I gathered flag belts from all the neighbors and set up cones in a large circle.  Each person put a flag belt on.  It was one person versus everyone else, but alliances did spring up.  A person got out when both flags on the flag belt were pulled.  Once out the survivors were told to stand around the circle and they could get back in if they could pull a flag of someone still in with only one step into the circle.  The person left standing is the Survivor.  We played a few rounds of that, which took a good 30 minutes.   The weather was calling for thunderstorms so we headed in for cake and ice cream. 

CAKE: My mom made homemade vanilla ice cream cake with hot fudge on top.  

PARTY SNACKS: We also bought huge cupcakes and had cookies.   The desert and presents went over well and it started raining outside.  The only thing we did not do was play manhunt outside, but it turned out well with inside games.  They played Apples to Apples and they enjoyed a goldfish taste test challenge.  Everyone loved the goldfish and the bags were almost gone by the end of the night.  We tallied up the points and the winner of Survivor got a $5 gift card to Dairy Queen.  

FAVORS: Everyone got to keep their bandanas and of course those items bought at the auction.  The party ended at 10pm and everyone had a good time.  People still talk about it weeks later and they asked about her next birthday party.  I would recommend this type of party for a group of kids that would not mind running around and who can get into it.

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