Mario Night

I've been wanting to do a Mario event at the library for a while, ever since my co-worker painted Boos on one of our Halloween carnival games. I finally went through with it with a Mario Kart Tournament, obstacle course, and crafts.

We had the Mario Kart tournament downstairs in the conference room, on the projector. I used the poster print to print out some old school Super Mario bricks, coins, clouds, a warp pipe, and question block to put on the wall. It turned out really cute!

Mario and Luigi Paper Puppets

The crafts were also downstairs. I slightly modified Mario and Luigi puppets from M Gulin so we could do them without the string and just use brads.

I cut out the black and white version on cardstock so the kids could color them. And I put out some brads so they could assemble the puppets themselves.

Piranha Plant Craft

The third craft was a Piranha Plant picture. I used this template to cut out each piece of the piranha plant beforehand, so the kids could just assemble and add in details with crayons.

I had planned on also doing this cute Goomba craft from Chica and Jo (they also have a Koopa Troopa!) but I ran out of time. I thought it was okay, though, since I already had Goombas in our obstacle course.

The video is a walk through of the obstacle course.

Butterflies to protect the innocent.

I made the coins out of two yellow paper plates, a print out of a Mario coin, some yellow construction paper, and some hot glue. I hung them from the ceiling with fishing line.

First I printed out a picture of a Mario coin and glued it to the center of a yellow paper plate. You'll need two plates for each coin.

I punched a hole through the top of both plates (to put the fishing line through when it came time to hang them). Then I hot glued the two plates together.

Then I cut long strips of yellow construction paper, just a little longer than the width between the two paper plates.

I hot glued the paper strips around the two paper plates as shown. Once they're dry, they're ready to hang!

Next was the Yoshi Egg Toss.

I tried to find a small green trash can, but didn't have any luck. So I bought a white one and covered it with green construction paper. The part around the top is green craft foam, and I added the lines with a black Sharpie. The white plastic eggs are leftover from Easter. I just drew on green spots with a marker. As the obstacle course went on, we had to tape them together because they kept coming apart.

The Goomba Stomp part of the obstacle course was something I'd seen several times on Pinterest, but I think my original inspiration was from Joy In the Works. In fact, I got lots of good ideas from that blog.

Anyway, since I couldn't find brown balloons, I had to use these metallic gold ones I found at Walmart, in the wedding section. I printed out a Goomba face and taped it on. For the feet, I cut a paper plate into fourths, cut a small slit in the center, and pushed the balloon tie through the slit. The paper plate feet kept him standing and facing the right direction.

The bricks were cardboard Mondo Bloxx that we had bought for the Poe Party.

I made the question block by covering a box with yellow bulletin board paper. I printed out a picture of a question block and cut out the question mark and circles and glued them on.

I made the Fire Power hat inside by cutting out a M from red felt and hot gluing it to a plain white baseball cap. I printed out the Mario M and traced it onto the felt so I'd get the right look.

Once they had the Fire Power, they could throw a fire ball at some Koopa Troopas. This is my handy bowling set (also used for Stormtrooper Bowling and Oompa Loompa Bowling) with Koopa Troopa cut outs on the pins and the balls wrapped in an image of fire I printed out on 11x17 paper.

Here it is in action.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a better picture of the "Find Where Bowser is Hiding Princess Peach" shell game, but it's just three paper cups with pictures of Bowser taped to the front. Underneath was a small, laminated cut out of Peach that they had to find after the cups were shuffled.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the Mario Kart tournament continued. The winner got this nifty little Mario night light.