In short, I am busy: Angry Birds party

I prefer to do projects based on books, not media, but the kids love the Backwards Angry Birds game so much (basically they build towers, stick the balloons with bird faces in them, and then throw the pig puppets to knock them down) that I've kept this in hopes of tying it to a book series at some point. 

Project: Plastic Bottle Piggies

• Kids decorated plastic bottles (the necks are the snouts).
• Supplies
• Plastic bottles
• Paper, foam, wiggly eyes
• Glue dots, markers, scissors, tape

Project: Catapults

• I borrowed this from our first Mad Scientists Club
• Kids make catapults and use them to launch cotton balls into the air
• Supplies
• popsicle sticks, plastic spoons, rubber bands
• glue dots, tape (packing tape, duct tape)
• bottle caps, cotton balls

Game: Backwards Angry Birds

• The Rules
• Supplies
• Balloons, sharpies
• Lots of recycled boxes and tubes
• pig puppet

Evaluation

• 6-17-14: I changed a few things this year - I took out the cookies and making pompoms and added catapults. The big draw is really the game, so we stuck with that. I had about 60 people attend and it was crazy. Fun, but crazy. I don't think I can handle this another year - some of my staff weren't available and I didn't have the volunteers and it was just exhausting. The fact that I didn't get anything to eat this day might have factored in as well...so, good but needs preparation and staff. And I forgot the window decals AGAIN.
• 6-18-13: Last year's Star Wars party was a bit of a fiasco (ok, a huge disaster) and I was trying to find ways to improve it when I started seeing excellent suggestions for Angry Birds. This sounded much easier. This whole program was a conglomerate of all the different ideas I collected from other librarians here. Approximately 75 people signed up and I closed registration on Monday. 68 people actually showed up and about 50 of those had registered, so it was good. We somehow ended up with an insane amount of frosting, so I need to remember to tell the store we only need 2 tubs, not 6!! next year and we had cookies left over, but we're doing a birthday program next week, so we stuck them in the freezer. Not many people made pompoms, but several people filled their pigs with them to take home. Meh. The balloons were a huge hit and everyone loved the game. I couldn't have done it without two girls who showed up to volunteer and one of my aides staying late to clean up. People usually leave these things around the 45 minute mark, but we were still going strong at 3:00!