Indoor Nerf Party

Z’s 10th birthday was a bullseye with this Nerf Party.

I love making printables and Z helped me with my designs this year. He also spent a lot of time coloring and making his own Nerf theme signs to hang up around the house.

Even little brother helped set up.

As each guest arrived we had a sign in sheet where they wrote their name, gun model, and number of darts. This made everything so much easier!

The “Armory” was a pegboard with hooks moved from the garage to the play room. The boys could hang their guns up there until battle time.

We made these ammo pouches full of nerf darts as party favors.

They were really little messenger bags from the dollar store that Z covered with black duct tape and then individualized with names taped on with clear tape.

All the boys had a way to carry their own bullets and they all used them. It turned out so great.

The first game was Whack-A-Villian which was a game that J and Z made for a Cub Scout carnival and then we played at Ezie’s 4th birthday party. Everyone used the same gun and had to see how many bad guys they could hit. The two boys with the highest scores were team captains for the nerf war.

Next up was the Mess Hall (military phrase for cafeteria).

Of course, the food had to be Nerf theme which meant lots of orange and blue.

We also bought some frozen pizzas and added our own toppings in the shape of a dart board.

Then there were fun military theme touches like cheese bombs

War Heads and Explosives (Pop Rocks)

Gun powder (pixy stix)

and more…

The cake turned out amazing. I’ll be sure to post a recipe/tutorial for that soon.

Lastly was the ultimate capture the flag show down. There was a blue team and an orange team. Each team got some face paint markers in the corresponding shades of their team color. I explained that this was their war paint and war paint started with the Native Americans who would apply paint to their face and bodies to prepare for battle. This was the print out for the war paint station.

I turned a full length mirror on its side so that multiple boys could paint their face at once.

The blue team was using the bathroom mirror.

Then each team had 15 minutes to build their fort out of cardboard boxes.

After that was the big moment. The Nerf War.

The rules were the same as capture the flag and they had an orange shirt and a blue shirt as flags. If they were hit they had to go back into their forts. The final battle was a free for all and the boys went wild tearing down their forts, firing their guns, and making an insane amount of noise. It was probably not the safest most organized activity, but it can you imagine anything more fun for a group of 4th grade boys?

Yes there was some bickering about who was shot and who was cheating, but all in all they really just had a great time.

I have a lot of favorites when it comes to kid’s parties, but this one is going to be added to that list.