11 Year Olds Army Themed Party!

Okay, I have a brief outline for what I have planned fot this party to share with you but I also have a couple of problems I hope you can help me out with.

Guests will be invited in this way;

‘’General Steward requests the honour of your presence at his 11th birthday party on Monday 20th August.12 till 2pm civilian time at the Steward family compound. Uniforms are not essential but all recruits will be performing drills outside so please dress appropriately, eg camouflage/green/tan. Please bring your own firearm if you have one and prepare for battle! Birthday rations will be served.’’

These will be printed on home designed invites.

As the guests arrive they will each be given a plastic army helmet and some matching dog tags that will eiter have team 1 or 2 written on them. They will also be given a sticker to wear stating their rank eg Corporal Smith or Seargant Brown.

First activity is when my sister will come out dressed in hired army attire and do a drill with the children in mean army sarg voice. They will need to warm up and do simple exercises.

Following that will be a timed assault course. One at a time the kids will need to jump in and out of a soccer training ladder, run up and down a skate ramp, jump over hurdles and in and out of tyres, grab a water bomb and pelt Hitler who will be pinned to my yard fence and then crawl thru a box thats been decorated with net, green crepe etc only to be briefly squirted with water at the other end.

The last game before lunch is to get into 2 teams (depending on what team their dog tags says theyre in). The smallest member of the team is `injured`. The rest have to wrap them fully in 2 rolls of toilet paper (not the face tho) then lie them in a duvet to be carried to a designated spot and win a prize. An adult will need to be present within each team for safety reasons.

Then it will be lunch-traditional party food served in the garden on camouflage plates and cups. I have ordered a tank cake from my local bakery.

After lunch we`ll have another game where the teams have to fill their helmets with water from a bucket and empty it into an empty one before the other team.

Then the kids will have to find all the army men I have hidden around the garden. They will get a sweet for their goody bag for each one they give me.

The final game will be pass the parcel played to wartime music.I will wrap it up in brown paper and string etc like a wartime parcel .

Then my son will call his friends up one by one to receive a boot camp certificate and their goody bag. I also got stickers syaing `I survived General Stewards Boot Camp` for just under £2 from Ebay or you could make these yourself.

The added touch I would have liked for the party was to have a real soldier come and give the kids a talk but sadly no one has got back to me about that - you may be more lucky.

Problems;

1) What can I dress up as?
My son wants traditional camo gear. The other grown ups are all coming as soldiers except my mum who is coming as an old wartime woman with rollers and apron and a brush etc. I wanted something a bit different that would impress my son!!!

2) What army themed food could I do?

I hope these ideas can help someone and would be grateful if you could give me any help with my problems. Thanks.