How to throw a Lego birthday party: a real mom’s guide

This guide will give you everything you need to know to throw an awesome–and totally doable–Lego birthday party. Simple ideas that give you maximum bang for your buck to create a party your Lego-loving kiddo will love!

It’s birthday season around our house. All three of my kids have birthdays between May and August, so we’re in full celebration mode! My oldest son turned SIX this past weekend. How did he get so big?!?!

Birthday parties are fun for me to plan, but with three kids, my ability to go all out on a HUGE, complicated bash is limited. Plus, I try to be reasonable with how much we spend on a kid’s birthday party.

I always ask myself, “Will doing this/buying this make the party better for MY CHILD?”

I have a tendency to get excited about all the amazing (crazy) ideas on Pinterest, but I remind myself that my kids don’t care about ninety percent of that stuff. They care about having a fun cake, a piñata, and playing with their friends (oh, and presents).

So, I try to be intentional about NOT getting carried away planning parties. Instead I look for low-effort, inexpensive ways to make my kids’ parties fun. Thus far, it’s been pretty successful.

OUR LEGO BIRTHDAY PARTY

My boys are completely obsessed with Legos right now. Little Man will spend hours building, taking apart, and re-building the two Lego sets he got for Christmas. Little Brother prefers to make up his own creations, but I’m amazed at how long that ONE activity will hold the attention of my three-year-old.

So let’s just say I wasn’t a bit surprised when Little Man chose to have a Lego birthday party this year. In fact, I was kind of excited. The possibilities are endless with Legos, and we had a great time bringing the party to life. Here’s how our Lego birthday party went.

INVITATIONS

I designed the invitations for our Lego birthday party in Photoshop using a free border image I found from Paper Trail Design. I downloaded the Legothick font from Urban Fonts and used it to make my son’s name look like the Lego logo. This tutorial explains how to do it in Photoshop Elements. I quickly added the rest of the text, and here’s the finished product:

I had them printed at Costco, and we were done!

If you’re not design-inclined, here is a super cute FREE printable invitation that would be a great, simple alternative.

DECORATIONS

I didn’t really decorate much for this party. In my experience, the kids just don’t care that much, so I saved my energy for other projects–like games.

My best find for decorations was these Lego-themed plates and napkins at the Dollar Tree.

They were perfect and super cheap! While I was there, I also got a red plastic tablecloth.

To go with the plates and napkins, I bought yellow cups and drew simple Lego faces on them with a black Sharpie. I did the same thing to some plain yellow bags that we used for party favors.

I was going to print a cute sign for the front door, but my printer ran out of ink right before the party…oops. Oh well, nobody missed it. I suppose that’s a reminder to me to keep things simple.

To finish off the decorations, I created a “design your own mini-figure” coloring page for the kids to do when they first arrived (see below to download) and placed those on the table along with Lego-shaped crayons. I made the crayons by melting old crayons in the Lego molds I got from Amazon.

FOOD

Past parties have shown me that kids don’t really eat at parties, so I don’t do a lot of food. Our party was from 3-5 in the afternoon, so we didn’t provide a meal. Instead, we had a snack of our favorite homemade kettle corn and apples. The kids got to eat this while my son opened his presents.

Otherwise, we let the cake be the star of the show…

THE CAKE

I actually made TWO cakes for Little Man’s birthday. Crazy? Maybe. But at least I can show you two options for your own party!

Option #1: Cupcakes

For his class at school, I made these fun Lego-themed cupcakes. They were actually ridiculously simple to make. Hooray! I highly recommend this route if you want a fool-proof cake with great wow-factor.

All you need is a boxed cake mix (I made funfetti cupcakes), some buttercream frosting (here’s my fave recipe), and some Lego candies (see below for instructions). Oh, and sprinkles. Can’t forget sprinkles.

Here’s how I decorated them:

Before I even made the cupcakes, I made the candy Legos. I originally bought these Lego molds from Amazon to use. However, when they arrived, I realized that the Lego brick molds were much bigger than I anticipated, about 1 inch by 2 inches. I decided to keep the molds and use them for making crayons, but I wanted to find a smaller Lego mold for these cupcakes.

I found what I was looking for at Michael’s…true-to-size Lego brick molds that worked perfectly!

I used candy melts to make red, blue, and yellow Legos to put on top of the frosted cupcakes and then topped them off with a scattering of sprinkles.

Super simple and fun!

TIP: I had a really hard time finding the round confetti-looking sprinkles I had in mind. Sure, I could have settled for any kind of sprinkle, but I get ideas in my head about what something is supposed to look like, and I get grumpy when I can’t find it. I finally found the perfect ones on top of the “funfetti” can of frosting at Target. Go figure!

Option #2: Fondant Cake

Decorating cakes is therapeutic for me. I love choosing the design with my kids and challenging myself to figure out how to make it happen. This cake became my inspiration for Little Man’s cake.

Related: 8 Fantastic DIY Birthday Cakes for Boys

At Little Man’s request, I made a chocolate cake as a base. Then I covered it with a thin layer of buttercream frosting before adding a covering of white fondant.

In case you’re thinking…Fondant??? I could never do a FONDANT cake!…hear me out. I used to be terrified of fondant too, but a couple of years ago I decided to take the plunge and try it. It turn out that my mom was right…it really is like play dough for grown-ups.

If you want to learn how to make fondant, check out my two-part super-detailed instructions–from a beginner, to a beginner.

Once I had the basic cake made, I got to work decorating!

I created a bunch of fondant Lego bricks using the same silicone mold I used for the cupcakes, and it worked pretty well. At first the Legos were hard to get out of the mold, but I learned that if I dusted the mold with powdered sugar before pressing the fondant into it, and then froze the mold for a bit, they came out much better and retained their shape. After I popped them out of the molds, I laid out the Legos on parchment paper and let them dry/harden a bit. The ones I made ahead of time and let harden overnight were much easier to work with than the soft, freshly-made ones.

I topped the cake with a giant fondant Lego man that I made using the Amazon molds.

Overall, the Legos didn’t turn out as crisp and straight as I would have liked, but I chose to use fondant rather than candy melts so that I could curve them slightly around the cake and avoid gaps. At the end of the day, my son LOVED his cakes, and none of the six-year-olds at the party complained about my crooked Legos. They were mostly just thrilled they could EAT the Legos!

Activities for your Lego birthday party

I had planned to do a lot of the activities for this party outside, but it ended up being really rainy for most of the day. It finally stopped right before the party, but the ground was really wet, so we kept most of the activities inside instead. Still, the kids had a great time with these simple activities that were practically free!

I always worry about not having enough activities to fill the time, but we had NO problem with that this year. In fact, I had several ideas we didn’t even use because the time flew so quickly!

Here’s what we did:

Design your own mini figure

When the kids first arrived, I invited them to use Lego-shaped crayons to design and color their own mini-figure. It was a good gathering activity while we waited for everyone to arrive.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE “DESIGN YOUR OWN MINI-FIGURE” COLORING PAGE.

 

Guess how many Legos

I filled a vase with Legos and, while they were coloring, I had all the kids guess how many were inside. The closest guess won a container of bubbles.

You could also make these adorable Lego head Play-doh buckets as prizes (which was my original plan), but I ended up getting bubbles simply because they were cheaper. The Play Doh heads (you can buy Play Doh in packs on Amazon) would also make a great party favor.

Pin the head on the Lego man

Little Man LOVES games that involve pinning the something on the something. To play the game, let each party guest pick a Lego head (you could even let them color and accessorize their head), and then try their luck at sticking the head as close to the head on the poster as possible!

Click here to download the FREE “Pin the Head on the Lego Man” poster

Simply print out the poster on cardstock paper (print the Lego heads on yellow cardstock), trim the margins, and glue the pages together to make the poster. Easy peasy!

Lego “bean bag” toss

This game was really cheap to make. I had a big Amazon box that I wrapped in yellow butcher paper and then cut diagonally in half to make two bean bag toss targets. I thought about making cute Lego bean bags…for about two seconds until I realized the effort that would take…and just used large Mega Bloks we already own. I gave the kids five tries to get them through the holes. Some kids wanted to do this game over and over, determined to get all five Legos through the holes!

For variety, you could assign different point values to each of the holes and let the kids add up their points.

Lego on a spoon relay race

This is basically a knock-off of the classic egg & spoon race. I split the kids into two teams and gave each team a large serving spoon and a bucket with 12 Mega Bloks in it. I had two additional buckets set up about 15 feet away. The first team to get all their Legos in the other bucket won.

Lego hunt

Think Easter egg hunt, but hide large Legos instead. I had thought briefly about doing this, but I didn’t really plan on it. But while we were outside for the relay race, the kids thought of it on their own and asked to do it! I had two of the older kids at the party hide them around the backyard and then the littles all ran around and found them. Miraculously, we didn’t even lose any! Talk about a zero-prep activity that was a hit!

Lego building challenges

There are tons of different building challenges you can give kids using various sizes of Legos. Here are some possibilities:

• See who can build the tallest tower in one minute. (We did this one over and over at the party!)
• Give each person a grab bag of 20-30 Legos and see what creations they can make. The catch: you must use ALL the Legos you are given.
• If you have enough wheels and bases, have each person (or in pairs) build a Lego car and race them, pinewood derby-style!

Frugal Fun for Boys has a BUNCH of other great ideas for Lego building games.

Piñata

What’s a party without a piñata? A failure, if you ask my kids. They LOVE piñatas and insist it’s the most important part of their birthdays. Thankfully, making a Lego piñata is super easy–hello rectangular box!

I basically wrapped a box in butcher paper, added crepe paper, and hot-glued on cardstock-wrapped yogurt containers for the studs. Easy peasy! For once, a project actually took LESS time than I had anticipated. That never happens!

Related: How to make a piñata from a cardboard box!

Here’s the birthday boy WHACKING away at his giant Lego…

FAVORS

The main party favor was the candy from the piñata. The kids used their Lego head bags to gather their loot when the piñata broke open.

I also let each of the kids pick several of the Lego crayons we used at the beginning to take home. I originally had planned to package the crayons in cute little baggies, but…life happened. A sick baby cut into my party planning time (and the lack of sleep from sick baby cut into my energy), so I decided to dispense with the cutesy packaging and just let the kids pick their own favorite colors. Win for everyone, I think!

Other Lego birthday party favor ideas:

• Mini-figs (if budget allows)
• Play Doh tubs with a Lego face drawn on
• A baseplate or small pack of Legos from the dollar store (Did you know Dollar Tree sells off-brand Legos now?!)

And that’s a wrap!

It was a fairly inexpensive party to put together, and the kids had a blast. Now I just need a SERIOUS storage solution for all the new Lego sets Little Man got from his kind friends at the party. There are Legos everywhere in my house right now. Yikes!

Related: Gift Guide: Alternatives to Legos for kids who love to build

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Want more fun birthday party ideas for kids? Try these!

• How to throw a Hot Wheels birthday party: A real mom’s guide
• How to throw a Lego Star Wars birthday party: A real mom’s guide
• Paw Patrol birthday party: A real mom’s guide
• 8 fantastic DIY birthday cakes for boys