Boy’s Army Birthday Party | DIY Army Obstacle Course for Cheap

This year for my son’s 7th Birthday, he was all excited about having an Army Theme. I loved the idea and put my husband to work planning the Army Obstacle Course! Every Army birthday party needs some Boot Camp elements, right?

The only guidelines I gave my husband:

It needed to be pretty epic (for a 7 yr old!) because it was going to be the main event of the party, so it did need to take some time.
It had to be done for free or very close to it!! He was pretty confident he could do this, so I just let him have at it!

This is what he put together and it was so amazing! The boys ( and most of the adults) loved it! We timed each boy and the winner got a prize!

Items needed for this DIY Army Obstacle Course:

7 tires (we got these free on craigslist)
lots of pallets (also free on craigslist)
wood stakes and scrap wood for signs
yellow paint
rope (we had this hanging around in our garage)
american flags (from our 4th of July decor box)
bird netting (from our old chicken coop)
staple gun
saw horses (we had these from my husband’s construction days)

All together, this cost us ZERO dollars to put together. It did take us an afternoon to put together after we had all of the supplies ready to go. You could modify it any way you would like to for your own Army or Boot Camp Party.

First, we set up the tire run, pretty standard for boot camp. Then Drew built a pallet ramp that the boys climbed up and jumped off. Make sure its solid! These boys were pretty excited and it worked really well. They loved jumping of the end of it! It wasn’t too high, but high enough to make them feel tough. The 3rd element was an Army Crawl. My husband used stakes and bird netting to create length of army crawl that the boys needed to crawl under. He attached the netting to the stakes with staples and it held up just perfectly.

Next we had 2 saw horses, one the boys climbed over, then next they climbed under. Pretty basic, but it added to the tough factor. our last main obstacle was The WEB! Sounds scary, huh? We took two large pallets and some scrap lumber to space it apart and keep it from falling over. Then stapled rope across, up and down and diagonal, leaving enough room for a 7ish year old to squeeze them selves under, over or between each rope. This one was a hit and stayed up at our house long after the party.

Our last element was a swinging bench framework that we took off the bench from. We set up a little stool for the boys to jump up off and grab the bar and swing off. Easy, and because of the height, it had a little (tiny) scare factor to it…again..we were looking to test their TOUGHNESS!

We used stencils Like these:Pro Art 6-Inch Painting Stencil Set, Letters and Numbers and some scrap wood to make our signs to go around the Army Obstacle Course. We ended up using these in Evan’s room as well, which is great for the budget!

Of course we had to have costumes for the boys to get into character! We provided Camo handkerchief headbands, camouflage vests and some face paint for fierceness!

For our Army Themed Birthday Cake, we made a basic chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. We have this little tradition in our house where I make the cake and my husband decorates it! I don’t know how that happened, but it started 10 years ago and has lasted till today!

We used dollar store army men, toy jeeps and little cupcake topper american flags to decorate the cake….and don’t forget the fortresses made out of kit kats, reeces pieces and rolos! My husband created a little battle scene and seriously had the best time doing it! HAA! And my 7 year old thought it was incredible!