In case you didn’t know… science is awesome! Finding the perfect balance between boy cool and mama style, Jenny of Peanut Butter & Jenny Photography (with assistance on styling + printables from RV Parties!) was a total genius with her son Charlie’s 9th birthday party! She designed a fun Chemistry Inspired Science Party with silly, messy and amazing lab experiments, a science class dessert table and creative “Take Home Experiment” favors for all the mini Einsteins!

PARTY HIGHLIGHTS to look out for:

• Periodic Table “C for Charlie” cupcake toppers + Cupcake cake with “Happy Birthday” Bunting
• Candy filled beaker kids table centerpiece and goggles + lab coats (large white t-shirts cut down the middle!)
• Exploding Elephant Toothpaste, Homemade Slime & Smoky Dry Ice Experiments
• Candy “Test Tubes of Atoms”, Double Helix Lollipops and Oreo Molecules
• Chalkboard Dessert Table Backdrop, Test Tube Cookies + “Nine” Banner

PARTY DETAILS, as told by Jenny…

Planning parties for my big kids, much less my BOYS, gets more and more difficult every year. As my oldest son grows, parties have had to become more cool than cute. But with a photographer-mama, they always have to have style! Trying to find that perfect balance of chic and tween-approval, everything came together in our Science Is Awesome {Chemistry-Inspired} 9th Birthday Party. With the amazing styling assistance of RV Parties, we teamed up and geeked-out to create a FUN science birthday party, complete with experiments!

Beakers, and goggles, and lab coats – oh, my! Not to mention home-made slime, exploding elephant toothpaste and smoky dry ice! The kids had a blast with hands-on, messy experiments and learning all about how mixing different chemical materials together could cause really fabulous and FUN reactions!

Dessert Table

To create an appealing and fun dessert table, I paired RV Parties’ printable design with colorful and themed treats. One of my favorite things in the party was the design of a mock periodic element for my son’s name and birthday. We used the design of the element to create adorable custom cupcake toppers! In addition, we had chocolate dipped Oreos and mini-Oreos stuck together as “molecules” and cake pops as “atoms”! We had test tubes full of gumball “atoms” and perfect custom cookies to look like test tubes and the newest element on the periodic table, “Charlie”!

We loved the look of chalkboard in our design, which we felt is also really trendy right now.  I created a “chalkboard” as our backdrop. I knew I couldn’t handwrite a chalkboard design, so RV created a large print design of a chalkboard that I had printed as a 3’x4′ engineer print at Staples and attached it to an old cork board we had in the boys’s playroom.

I filled the remaining wall space with party-theme balloons, complete with atom polka-dots!

Set Table

I love to set a “formal” table for a party. For this table, RV Parties designed chalkboard placemats that I had printed and topped with 99 cent glass plates from IKEA. I tucked forks, spoons, straws and napkins inside a chevron paper bag and wrapped a orange soda in it’s chemical-equation bottle wrapper.

For a centerpiece, I filled large beakers with lots of theme-color candies.

I also set each place with the children’s name tags, theme-colored lab goggles and a lab coat. Lab coats are actually REALLY expensive to buy so I bought plain white tshirts two sizes larger than the children and cut them up the middle. Once I washed them, the raw edge curled under a bit and they looked just like lab coats – for a MUCH better price.

Favors

• I didn’t want the experimenting to end with the party, so I decided a “Take Home Experiment” would be a perfect party favor! Children grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke and a package of Mentos with experiment instructions as they left.
• Once they got home, they could combine the two items to share a really exciting and fun chemical reaction with their parents and siblings!

Science Expirements

Calsin, owner of STEM-Kids, travels from playdates to schools to birthday parties, setting up and hosting amazing experiments to bring science to children. I told Calsin that, for boys, the experiments should be a bit silly, messy and amazing! She brought all the ingredients to make slime, to explode elephant toothpaste from a bottle and dry ice! The kids were amazed and had so.much.fun. They didn’t even notice that they were LEARNING as well!

While experimenting away, our birthday boy and his best friend (who is a girl but NOT his girlfriend) wore custom hand-painted tshirts by Ella Mella!