Dinosaur Birthday Fun

by Tracey
(Fresno, CA )

My daughter loves dinosaurs, so we decided to throw her a dinosaur party for her 4th birthday.

We made simple invitations out of construction paper at home. We cut two identical sized ovals out of construction paper and put them on top of each other. We cut the top egg in half with a zig zag line and tacked the two halves together with a brad. The “eggshell” said, “Dinosaurs have been spotted…” You cracked the egg open to reveal the words, “…at NAME’s house! Come to a dinosaur birthday party at TIME and DATE.”

We didn’t do much for decorations, since we didn’t figure 4-year-olds would care either way. But we cut out 20 huge dinosaur footprints out of black garbage bags the night before, and the morning of the party we taped them going up the sidewalk and down the hallway to our apartment door. The kids really loved the footprints and it got them so excited for the party.

When kids arrived they played with balloons until everyone was at the party. Then they all chose one sheet of paper with a drawing of a dinosaur skeleton on it, and glued assorted colored pasta shapes to the paper to create the skeleton. They liked taking it home with them to hang on their walls after the party.

We headed outside to play games since it was a nice day, but you could do these games inside, too. We played Egg Relay. We divided the kids up into two teams and each team raced the other to carry hard-boiled eggs (a.k.a: hard-boiled eggs) in a spoon across a line on the ground.

The next game was Extinction (a dino version of Hot Potato). We put a dinosaur song on the CD player and played the music while the kids sat in a circle and passed around a stuffed dinosaur. Whoever held the dinosaur when the music stopped was Extinct.

Then we went back inside for cake, which was a 9x13” sheet cake with green frosting, a blue icing lake, and graham cracker crumbs of dirt. It was topped with plastic dinosaurs and miniature trees.

Overall, it turned out to be a fantastic birthday party which my daughter absolutely loved.