Rock and Gem Party

He is 7! It has happened already! Now I need to figure out how to parent a 7 year old! I haven't done that before.

Every 2nd year we support our children to organise themselves a birthday party. Orlando has done a few now and he loves the process.

This year he had a dilemma as to which 'theme' to choose (he is passionate about many things) so we planned them all! Through this process there was a clear winner. A theme that he has been passionate about for a long time and was going to make for a really cool party.

Rocks and Gems!

Here is what he planned...

Invite

Tools

Each guest was provided a bucket with a magnifying glass, paint brush, pair of tweezers and a tool for excavation. These were used in all the activities and then taken home at the end. 

Activities

Excavation - Sandpit was buried with bones, real fossils, polished gems, shells and an assortment of other 'treasure'

 Fossicking - Big tubs full of sand, water, chip gems, shells and large gems. Scoops, real fossicking sieves and gold pans made it feel even more authentic.

Rock Dig - We had a lot of fun creating a plaster and sand rock dig. We followed the tutorial over at 'longlivelearning'. We had great fun making them before hand and 3 of them lasted the whole party, and now, 3 weeks after the party, they are getting close to being finished. They were very popular and the party and the kids got a real sense of achievement when they finally got out a treasure.

Gold and Gem Mine - I forgot to take a photo of this! We got a kids tunnel and a small tent and covered the whole thing in MANY black plastic bags. This made it completely dark inside. We then spray painted a bucket full of normal rocks gold. These rocks we hidden all through the tunnel and tent. So when the kids went in with a head torch it lit up the gold for them to collect. We hid some large rough cut gems in there also.

I am not a big fan of competition at birthday parties. So near each experience was a bucket for you to place the treasures you had excavated or found. This served two-fold, if an activity was wiped clean, we could re-hide treasures, but also made the morning feel like a communal effort. We were all working together to excavate as much as we could. At the end of the party we collected all the buckets and put it into 2 really big trays. One of the kids said "WOW look at all the work we have put in! We have all collected so much!" (my non-competitive heart sang)

Then everyone collected 20 of their favourites to take home from the party, along with their tools.

Cake

This is always the first thing Orlando plans. Pinterest is a wonderful tool when it comes to ideas for cakes. There are some very talented cake decorators out there... I am not one of them. I can usually make a cake look pretty good but when thinking of rocks... A friend had her sons birthday party a few weeks earlier and she had made EDIBLE GEODES. They were IMPRESSIVE! So we got to thinking and thought that we might use this idea to make a geode cake topper.

Not all went to plan, I learnt a lot. But we had some crystal caves to use and found some chocolate rocks to add to the 'rock-i-ness'.

Inside was chocolate mud with jube lollies baked though it (like gems in the dirt). I DON'T recommend doing this... and wont be doing it again :) They made the cake really hard to cut and all sank to the bottom. They were hard to eat also.

Food

Well the food all needed to be rock - related so we had...

Chocolate Chia Seed Balls
Caramel Macadamias
Chocolate Rocks
Caramel Pop Corn Balls
Rock Cakes
Pretzels (with Salt Crystals) 

We also added -
Homemade Sausage Rolls and Spinach Rolls
Prawn Cutlets
Fruit Platter
Cheese Platter