photo credit: carlo.piana

Stealing the Dragon’s Treasure is one of our indoor Princess Party Games suitable for ages six and up.

The story

A fierce, ancient dragon has moved in to the Kingdom and has been creating mayhem. The dragon has even managed to steal the Crown Jewels!

As you are amongst the bravest Princesses (and Princes!) of the Kingdom, it is your job to sneak in to the Dragon’s Lair and recover your Royal treasure.

There is one advantage in your favour! Although the dragon is very fierce when awake, it is now asleep after a very busy day of causing trouble in the Kingdom. Of course everyone knows that even while asleep a dragon is dangerous – so this is a the perfect opportunity for you to practice your silent walking. Creeping around may just come in handy around the Castle if you are in the mood for a midnight snack!

What you need

A quiet place to play with plenty of room. A blindfold, a bunch of keys & a metal or ceramic bowl. The important thing is to have a noisy object that is difficult to pick up quietly. This can be played outdoors, if you have a suitably quiet location.

Gameplay

Choose a player to be the dragon. The player is blindfolded and sits down at one end of the area. Place the keys in the bowl in front of the dragon. Now explain to everyone that this is the treasure the Princesses are trying to recover.

The remaining players stand quietly at the far end of the playing area. A distance of four to five metres is ideal, but work with what you have.Each of the Princesses take their turn to sneak up to recover the treasure (the keys) and return them to the starting line.

The dragon listens for the players sneaking up, while pretending to be asleep. This is why the other players need to be quiet to give the dragon a fair chance. The dragon can point and roar (breathing fire!) in the direction they think they can hear the incoming player.

If the dragon does catch a player, the hapless Princess must lay down on the spot. The next brave player then makes their approach. There is usually a player who, when being the dragon, will point in many directions very quickly. Stop the game and explain that a dragon needs a moment in between fiery breaths to recover. Focus on what you can hear as the dragon player.

Winning

If a Princess can return the treasure (keys) to the start line without being caught by the dragon, the round is over & they take the dragon’s place next round. If all players were caught, the dragon wins the round. Choose a new player to be dragon for the next round.

Run the game for as many rounds as the children are interested. With under 10’s this can run for three or four rounds – older kids may want more chances, perhaps for every player to have a chance at sitting on the treasure.

Technorati Tags: dragon, indoor, Princess Party Games, quiet, sneaking, treasure

The story of this Princess party game runs like this : an evil witch has it in for the Princess (strangely enough!) and has cast a spell on the Princess the night of the Royal Ball! This spell has caused all of the Princess’s finest things to be scattered to the four corners of the kingdom.

The contestants are divided into teams, from each team they select a Princess who is to be dressed. The remaining team members must scurry around to the four corners of the kingdom (which are the corners of the room or yard or field – wherever you are playing) to fetch the Princess’s fine things and get her ready for the Royal Ball.

The rules are very simple. You may only carry one item at a time and you must place each item correctly upon your Princess before moving off to find the next item.

As you will quickly see, this game can be fleshed out as much as you like. The more costume items you have, the more members each team can have. If you have many many sets of costume then the teams can be as few as two players. In this case you might run the game twice allowing each player to perform each task once.

At the end you can have a grand entrance to the Royal Ball with the freshly costumed Princesses. If you run this game to the clock, it can be very funny as each Princess arrives in a state of disarray – perhaps with only one slipper on or a gown on backwards!

What variations of this game can there be? Well depending on the age group, you might have the making of the costumes as part of the game. For older players it can also be great fun (and extend the game’s time) if the players are allowed to hide pieces they find that belong to the other team! Your options are to run this game to the clock or until each Princess is dressed just right. This will depend on the mood of the party.

Also you might consider hiding some or all of the items before the game, so the team members must search for some hard to find items. This is a game that you would run on a points system – so if you are running the game to the clock, for very competitive parties you could score a point for each item that is correctly worn by the Princess once time has run out.

To recap : Dress the Princess(es) for the ball by searching for their costumes piece by piece

Major variants:

• Dress until the Princess has a complete outfit for the ball
• Dress as fast as you can until the timer runs out

Minor variations:

• Create the costume items as a craft activity
• Hide some pieces before the game for extra difficulty

Technorati Tags: clock, costumes, points, Princess Party Games, race, royal ball, witch

In this post I will describe three types of crowns that can be made, and how you might use them in your party. Let me run you through each one in turn.

Depending on the ages of your little Princesses, you may want to pre-cut the shapes for these crowns, or perform other steps in preparation for the party.

1. Birthday Princess’s crown
A large poster crown that is decorated by all the Princesses as a gift to the birthday girl. One that might even end up on the birthday Princesses’ wall!

Start with a large poster sized piece of gold, silver or coloured cardboard (source these from any stationery store.) Depending on the ages you may wish to draw and even cut the major crown shape (start with an even sawtooth design for the basic shape if you’re stuck for an idea, but do get as creative as time allows!) Once cut, our crown poster is ready for all the Princesses to decorate!

Firstly if they can write or sign their name, do so, otherwise you can sign for them, or place a handprint with some poster paint. Now the serious business begins – creating a unique crown for the birthday girl or boy! This might involve adding glitter stickers, drawings of themselves, doodles, rhinestones, sequins, feathers – even pictures cut from magazines can be stuck on if you have anything that would be appropriate. This handmade Princess crown will make a wonderful keepsake to remind your little Princess of her very special royal day. In a party situation you can easily allow 15 minutes for this activity.

2. Princess Team Crowns
Create a poster crown for your team using decorations to keep score throughout the party. Tally the decorations at the end and trade then for party treasure!

Each Princess is assigned to a team. Have large (but equal!) sized crowns cut from a poster sized gold sheet of cardboard from any stationery store. The crown shapes can be fairly simple, you’ll want to leave plenty of room for decorations! Get the Princesses to decorate it a little, writing their team’s name and their own names on it.

During the party – especially for the Princess party games (though for any activity you wish to reward) hand out glitter stickers to the teams as prizes. These serve to further decorate the team crown. As the teams win games and get “prizes” you will see some very excited faces!

Of course, as the caller or adult running the games knows full well, the prizes are rigged so that the crown of each team is filled by the end of the party and everyone is a winner This activity helps to promote team work and builds self esteem for the Princesses. As they all pull together to succeed for their team you minimise the feeling that any single child is a ‘loser’ since they all work for the team.

Each glitter sticker represents gold (chocolate coins) or jewels (candy) for all participants in the team that you can hand out at the end of the party.

3. Personal Princess Tiaras
Each child creates and decorates their very own crown or tiara for the party.

For a personal crown, you really need more than a sheet of standard sized paper to be able to fit around the head – go poster sized sheets for best results. You may want to use metallic cardboard or thicker coloured paper as the main material. See this great PDF for a template to cut great crown shapes every time! (The basic idea is : using A4 or letter paper draw a half crown on two sheets – cut these out & join with tape to make your template shape which then guides the cutting of the final crowns out of poster sized sheets.)

The little Princesses can decorate as they wish (which they love to do!) – be sure they write their name (with help if needed) on the inside so that they can take the crown home as a keepsake. For that extra touch, perhaps a little thank you written on the back by the Birthday Princess? As in the Teams scenario, these may also be used for stickers from winning party games or random “prizes” throughout the party.

At the end of the party, the count back should be nearly the same for all the Princesses an Gold coins or Jewel lollies can be dished out evenly so that everyone is happy.

As a party entertainer, I only provide store-bought individually wrapped sweets. However if you are doing this at home, you can could use any lollies regardless of wrapping. My favourites are strawberries & creams, sugar coated jellies or smarties (pretend they are jewels!) so that the little Princesses can eat them straight away.

In my experience, these crowns can be done from the age of 4 onwards, with assistance of course depending on their ages. One of the easiest things is to just have them pre-cut and have the pencils/glue/glitter out so that the decorations begin straight away and you can then get onto the rest of the Princess party games!

I hope you found this informative, I have so many more Princess party ideas so talk soon
Cherrio
Mel

Technorati Tags: craft, crown, decorate, poster, Princess party ideas, prizes, score, teams, tiara

Being a Princess is not about having a Queen or King for a parent (although that can be a fun role for the parents to play!) Rather it is all about attitude, manners, poise, and grace. These are things anyone can have, with a little practice. So our Princess party games will center around using these skills – make practice acting like a Princess a part of your Royal Whispers game.

So what about the game? Well I’m glad you asked. Royal Whispers is game of Princess tea party whispers. You may remember a similar game called Chinese whispers.

Sit your Princesses down at the Royal table, encouraging them to practice their tea party skills. Firstly their Princess voices, which should be measured, slow and articulate. Naturally one will talk in the third person! Another fun tip is to hold their cups while extending the pinkie (or little finger) in a very obvious manner. Once they’ve had a short time to practice these – the Princesses are ready to start the game.

To start a game of Royal whispers you need a message - suitably royal, of course. Use a message like : “Princess [party girl's name] requests the pleasure of your company on tuesday next at the Royal Pony Club.” Of course you may write whatever you want in the message, but do keep it as Royal as possible, this is a Princess party game after all. This message is then passed down the line, from one Princess to the next via a whisper, so no-one else can hear it.

At the end of the line the final Princess speaks the message out loud as it has arrived, in the style of a Royal proclamation. The rest of the Princesses are to reply “Yes, your Highness” – no matter how strange the message may sound! As soon as this happens, the Princesses will want to discover who heard what and just how the message was changed as it passed down the line, which is where the real fun lies.

So there you have it – Royal whispers is one of those Princess party games that you can pull out with a moment’s notice. Best of all it needs no setup or equipment at all!

Enjoy the party!

Technorati Tags: Chinese whispers, no equipment game, Princess Party Games, royal whispers, tea party games