Party with the Penguins of Madagascar! f you’re celebrating a birthday party with a Penguins of Madagascar theme, check out some of the party ideas here: decorations, crafts, games, favors, and more!
For this party, we followed the Penguins on an adventure. We also used quite a few downloads from the Penguins of Madagascar site – so very useful – http://www.penguinsofmadagascar.ie/#downloads. Unfortunately, however, it looks like this link is no longer active and the downloads are no longer available.
Try out a few of these suggestions below and let us know how it goes and what you think!
INVITATIONS
For parties, get your guests in the mood with a Special Agent Party Kit themed invite from the Penguins of Madagascar’s site: http://www.penguinsofmadagascar.ie/downloads/PENGUINS_SpyKit.pdf. Unfortunately, however, it looks like this link is no longer active and the spykit.pdf isn’t available.
DECOR
For decorations, you can print out the spy banner and have it displayed around the party area. We used blue themed tablecloths, plates, and cutlery while sprinkling in a few print outs of the characters from the movie.
If you’ve got the time, you can easily create an Antarctic environment by wrapping up any package boxes with White Banner Roll (banner paper works well – it’s thick enough that you only need one layer and is about as large as a wrapping paper roll). Stack them around the house and you’ve got ice blocks all around the party area!
If you’ve got any snowflakes or snowy Christmas decorations, you can pull those out as well to add to the “frigid” temperatures.
ARRIVAL
Most guests will trickle in a few minutes before or after the actual start time of the party. To keep everyone in theme, have a few activities in an area of the party.
We had some “spy badges” (from the Spy Kit Badge) for kids to color and design as part of their “First Day of Spy Training”. To make it look a little more official, we purchased an ID Holder and Retractable ID Badge Reel for each kid.. Once the badges were put together, they all felt very professional and ready for their spy tasks!
FOOD & DRINKS
Since penguins are sea creatures, we went the seafood route but also added in some standard chicken tenders for our more basic eaters.
We had a few snacks and dishes out and labeled them to tie them into the move:
- Penguin delicacies – Goldfish or any other fish shaped crackers
- Cheezy Dribbles – Cheese Puffs or cheetos Cheetos
- Fish Sticks with “mystery sauce” – Fish sticks with ketchup, mustard, ranch, and any other favorite sauce
- “Spy-ghetti” – spaghetti (for our group we had one with sauce and one just buttered noodles
- For the drinks, we had regular kool-aid but added in some fish-shaped ice cubes. There are quite a few out there on Amazon, but we opted for a basic one (Fish Shaped Ice Cube Trays).
GAMES
In keeping with the penguin spy theme, we told guests they would have to go through “Training” once their badges were complete. We had a few games set up as their “courses”:
- Invisible Ink – The spy kit has an easy science-based activity (you or your child may have even done this at one time or another), but we did this as a group. The kids had fun making some messages 🙂
- Go fishing – As spies out in the field, each penguin would need to be able to get their own food. We spread out a blue plastic tablecloth (Dollar Store or party section of Target/Walmart) and told the kids it was the water. We spread out a few white sheets of paper as the “ice” on top of the tablecloth – we did move them around depending on the kids’ height. Kids could only step on the ice to get the “cheezy dribble” (mini bags of cheetos) that were scattered “in the water” (on the table cloth). They’d have to reach with their “fishing pole” (kitchen tongs) to get the cheezy dribble without falling off their ice block or stepping off.
- An alternative if you have a smaller space would be to stay in one place. Add cheetos to a large bowl and give the kids a spoon or mini strainer (fishing net) to get as many snacks in a few seconds.
- Agility Training – In this training room, each guest would need to move through a room filled with lasers (red yarn spread out across the room like a web). The goal is to get to the other side and retrieve a small object (we used a mini penguin figurine) without touching the laser with any part of their body.
- Actual Mission – Once their training was complete, they’d need to be sent on the actual mission – to find and bring in Dave. We spread out print outs of snow globes from around the world and had the guests find them. Once all globe images were found, we pulled out the piñata.
- We had a younger group, so we just let the kids find any/all snow globes. If you’ve got some older kids, you may want to have them just write down where they found the snow globe images so that everyone would have a chance to find them. You could also have kids go “in order” and add in clues to match the country on the next snow globe.
GOODIE BAG
If you want to keep in theme when you’re guests leave, sprinkle in some penguin items for their goodie bag along with any of the regular candy or hand outs you want to give out. As the actual bag, we used a basic Medium Blue Kraft Bag and glued on a print out of an image with the four penguins from the movie. For the goodies, we opted for adding in Winter Penguin Characters, Penguin Squirt Toys, and Penguin Stickers since penguin items were much easier to find in a decent bulk count than anything specifically Penguins of Madagascar. We also added swedish fish, goldfish packets, and mini cheetoh bags of course!
