By EK Wills
What child doesn't love a good boogie?
What a perfect opportunity to generate a party around this activity. It is DIY, only requiring some space in one room like a rumpus or family room and some imagination.
Setting the Club Scene
You can re-create your own childhood with a retro theme or modernize as you like.
We chose a studio 54 style and printed album covers from disco hits from the 70’s.
The sign was made from sparkling card to read ‘Club Coco’, the birthday girl’s own venue. See what creation fits for your birthday child's name.
Hire or borrow a smoke machine for the dance floor special effects and pick up a flashing globe or strobe light from your local party store (K-mart often have them too).
If you would like an even lower cost option, cover lamp shades with cellophane (not too close to the globe) and forego the smoke machine (which required a ventilated room).
Furniture is moved to the side, music through speakers with a playlist of choice and have a Wii or device to play “Let’s Dance” to mix it up.
Get the kids to dress in their disco best to attend and design your invites to the theme.
Photoshop can whip up one like this with a sourced image from the web. Just write in the party details in the space provided or add in your own design.
Disco Ball Cake
Any filling works but we thought layers of colour reflected our disco ball lights.
1. Use a mould for the bowl shape with your layered, swirled coloured cake, to be inverted to be the top of the ball.
2. Make another cake in a round tin to be the base layer in order to create the ball shape.
3.Then the final shape can be formed by shaving off the excess around the edges.
4. Coat the cakes with frosting and decorate with cachous (silver/coloured edible balls)
5. Add sparklers instead of candles for the full disco effect
Refreshments
Make sure there is plenty of water on hand rather than just sweet drinks because the dancers will get a thirsty workout.
Light snacks can provide the cool down time or shift between free dancing to music and “Let’s Dance” choreography.
Heavy or overly sweet treats may end up on the floor if they get too active.
Goodie Bags at the end can be stocked with retro sweets like musk sticks and milk bottles for the final touch to the evening.
This is a noisy, fun activity for a party but if you feel the revelers are too excited you could have a back up plan for a movie that involves disco: think Xanadu or Saturday Night Fever, depending on age appropriate level.
The only thing to do now is start planning.
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