"Cars" Birthday Party

For my son's 5th birthday party, we decided on the theme "Cars". We found lots of neat ideas online and came up with a great party. The weather was perfect for an outdoor party so we decorated our backyard. We had a sign on the gate to our backyard welcoming our guests to "Radiator Springs".







We planned alot of activities to keep all the kids
we invited busy! Our first activity was to have all
of the kids paint a wooden car at Ramone's House of Body Art. I bought the cars from the Oriental Trading Company (online). I made a sign similar to the one on top of Ramone's in the movie. I asked all of the kids to bring a paint shirt and had a table set up with lots of paint and paintbrushes where they could create their own work of art. We made sure to have a big bucket of warm soapy water close by for easy clean up!



Our next activity was the Piston Cup Championship. We have a slide outside and so I put a start line with tape at the top of the slide and a finish line at the bottom of the slide. I made a big sign that said Piston Cup and attached it to the side of the slide. 2 kids at a time took a turn racing Lightning and The King down the slide.

Our next activity was at Casa Della Tires. We told the kids that they needed to help Luigi move some tires around his shop. I went to a tire store and they gave me two black inner tubes for free. We used these as the tires. I had the kids split up into two teams and they had a relay race. They had to roll the innertube down to a cone and come back to their team, where the next player would do the same thing until everyone had a turn. We had parents help out along the way - it was a little tough for some of the kids to roll the tubes.

Next on our list was Guido's Pit Row Race. I asked the kids what Guido does - change tires, of course! It was their turn to see if they could change tires as fast as Guido. I kept them in their two teams. I had made 2 cars out of apple boxes and painted one green and one red. I made tires and headlights out of cardstock and put mactac on them so they wouldn't rip. These were then velcroed onto the car. The kids had to get into their car and run down to a cone where the pit stop sign was and take off one set of tires and headlights and put another set on, then race back to their team and change places with the next person. They had so much fun with this race!

Our next activity was Pin the Headlight on Mater. I drew a big picture of Mater on Poster board and of course, he is missing a headlight. I made yellow round headlights out of paper. The kids were blindfolded and they had to see if they could get Mater's headlight in the right spot.

We had birthday cake next. I went to Scoop n Save in Langley where they have special cakes displayed. I copied one of their designs and made this cool Lighning McQueen cake.

We ate our cake and had snacks at Flo's V-8 Cafe. I made a sign for this snack stop also. We had other decorations around the back yard also. I had found some large plastic signs with the cars from the movie and we hung these up along with black and red balloons and streamers. I also downloaded some pictures of the different cars from the movie, printed them off and hung them up on our shed so that the kids could see all the different characters.

For goody bags, I found Cars puzzles, Cars airhead candy, 2 chocolate racing cars, 2 racing flags, Cars stickers, and I made an activity book of different Cars coloring pages and a maze with a cover on it that said "Thank you for coming to my party". The kids also got to pick one prize from a bucket of assorted Cars pencils, erasers, bouncy balls and notebooks.

This was such a fun party to plan - the kids had such a great time!