How to Throw a Robot Party

Robot assembly kit

Poster board

Tin foil

Cups and plates

Straw

Forks

Black balloons

Sky line decals (glow-in-the-dark optional)

Robot game printouts

Crayons or colored pencils

Popsicle sticks

Scissors

Glue

Camera

Snacks

Juice boxes

Cupcakes

Soup cans

Pipe cleaners

Googly eyes

Safe metal scraps

Cake mix

Water

Eggs

Vegetable oil

Vanilla frosting

Blue and black food coloring

Licorice

Gumdrops

Fruit rings

Chocolate candies

 

Robot parties have been a favorite birthday party theme for children and can create a throwback futuristic theme for an adult party as well. There are many resources to show you how to cheaply create decorations, parties, picture stands, snacks, cakes and goodie containers to take home that bring out the robotic theme.

 

Step 1

Explore local science museums or stores that offer robot-making parties or kit supplies. Allowing the guests an opportunity to design and assemble their own primitive robot will give them a special take home toy!

 

Step 2

Decorate by creating some robots to hang around the party area. You can use poster board wrapped in tin foil to comprise the robot's body and head, colorful cups and plates for the eyes and nose, straw for the mouth and forks for the hair and antennae. You can create additional space-themed ambiance by blowing up black balloons and hanging decals for the sun, moon, stars and planets from them, some of which are made to glow in the dark.

 

Step 3

Print from templates or design your own robot games for guests to play. These could include robot mazes or printable coloring paper robots that can be decorated, cut out with scissors and glued to a Popsicle stick to make robot puppets.

 

Step 4

Create a robot photo stand with a hole cut out so guests can pose for their picture as a robot. This can be done by enlarging free robot printouts, coloring and assembling all the pieces of the robot excepting a whole for the face.

 

Step 5

Assemble edible “nuts and bolts” to serve as robot party snacks. These can be any snack food that look like nuts and bolts and the most popular choices have been Chex mix, Cheerios and pretzel sticks. Cheese puffs can become “memory cells,” potato chips can be labeled “computer chips,” juice boxes can be repurposed as “machine oil” and cupcakes can become “fuel cakes.”

 

Step 6

Make goodie bags full of robot related prizes for the guests to take home. You can use old soup cans with the labels removed and add piper cleaners, googly eyes and safe metal scraps to create a robot face for the goodie container.

 

Step 7

Assemble supplies and preheat the oven to make a robot cake from a box of cake mix, water, eggs and vegetable oil as instructed by the box. Mix black and blue food coloring with vanilla frosting to create a metallic gray frosting. Cut pieces of the cake to serve as the robot's body parts, including the limbs, torso and face and arrange them properly on a new tray. Connect the pieces of cake using frosting and freeze the cake for about 30 minutes to get the pieces to gel. After removing from the freezer, coat the entire cake in frosting. Use licorice pieces between the robot's head and body, to line the robot's arms and make the robot's antenna and mouth. Use gumdrops as the robot's ears, fruit rings for the eyes and chocolate candies for the pupils.

 

Key Concepts

• throw robot party

• how robot party

• make robot party

 

References

• LovelyLovelyThings: Robot Party Ideas

[http://lovelylovelythings.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/robot-birthday-party-ideas/]

• Betty Crocker: Robot Cake [http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/robot-cake/0123a837-6a6f-

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