Who isn’t fascinated by dinosaurs at one point! For that dino-loving fan or future paleontologist, we’ve got a party guide for you! Check out our ideas on decorations and food as well as our EPIC party games filled with imaginative fun! If your guests don’t love dinosaurs, they definitely will by the end of the party 🙂
We also created some images and printables that you can find here: Dinosaur Trivia Hunt and Dinosaur Labels.
DECOR
We kept our decorations fairly simple, opting to swing the budget to the games and other activities. We had a few themed plates, napkins, and plates from the Dollar Store and mixed those in with some matching color tableware. We also found a pack of dinosaur trivia cards at the Dollar Store. To be honest, the trivia questions on the back don’t match the picture of the dinosaur, but they still looked pretty cool scattered around the party area.
We also created some printables to add some extra bit of decorations to the tables. For our ‘sign’ holders and other activities, we upcycled some boxes, bottoms of paper grocery bags, and lunch paper bags to hold activities and snacks. We shredded the tops of the bags along with some extra brown tissue paper to fill them up with “dirt” and placed some small dinosaur figurines inside.
ARRIVAL
For the arrival, a dinosaur banner (Dollar Store) greeted our guests along with a Welcome Dinosaur Sign. We also set up a small table with a tablet with a “Which Dinosaur Are You” Online Quiz on it. Guests loved doing this quiz and some took it multiple times trying to get their favorite dinosaur 🙂 We also laid out some dinosaur stickers so they could stick them onto their shirts if they did get their beloved dinosaur!
FOOD & DRINKS
We had a number of appetizers and sides that were themed ‘dinosaur’. For the main courses (pizza), we had veggie pizza(For Herbivores) and meat pizza (fFor Carnivores). The cake was fairly simple- just a regular cake with a few clean dinosaur figurines on top.
Appetizers / Sides:
- Herbivore Specials (Veggie Platter)
- Dinosaur Claws (Bugles)
- Dino Scales (Potato Chips)
- Dino Eggs (Grapes)
- Dino Bones (White Pretzels)
Main Course:
- Dino Chicken Nuggets
- Veggie & Meat Pizzas
Dessert
CRAFTS
Our craft table had a few sticker scenes and coloring crafts for the kids. Check out our “Dinosaur Lab” and “Natural History Museum” 😉
- Dinosaur Lab – Station 1
- Create a Stand-up Dinosaur! We purchased a kit for Color Your Own Mini Dinosaur Characters which came with 48 dinosaurs to color and put together. It’s a simple craft & they get a stand-up dinosaur decoration to take home!
- Dinosaur Lab – Station 2
- Grow Your Own Dinosaur. Each kid has their own “egg incubator” where they could put their “egg” (grow capsule) into. Then they added the “grow agent” (warm water) and watched the water grow. If you’re using warm water, the capsules dissolve quickly and the sponge dinosaur expands in a few minutes.
- Natural History Museum –
- Can you Assemble the T-Rex Fossils? We picked up a packet of Make a Dino Sticker Scenes, where kids can put together stickers of the t-rex skeletons for a museum scene.
GAMES
- Dinosaur Excavation:
- If you’re able to fill a small bin or kiddie pool with sand, it would definitely be fun to hide some dinosaur figurines and let the kids dig for them! Instead, though, we purchased a Dig it Up Dinosaur Skeletons (12 count) for the kids to chisel away.
- First, though, we hide our dinosaur kits in “soil” (shredded paper bags and brown tissue paper). Each kid took turns with the toy shovel and had to “dig” their kits out (no hands!). We had varying degrees of difficulty. Easiest was letting the kids use two “shovels (wooden spoon); Medium was just one “shovel”; Hardest was using the handle portion of the spoons.
- We waited for each kid to find their ‘dinosaur egg’ then all chiseled them together. We did, though, let them open them so we could soak them. Note: this activity does take a bit even when you soak the eggs in water beforehand. Some were able to chip away in 15 min or so but in general it took about half an hour + some extra minutes to clean off their dinosaur finds.
- Treasure Hunt! For this party, we created clues themed around dinosaurs. (You can find the clues here). Each clue had some fun facts for the dinosaurs (or notes that some of these prehistoric creatures aren’t considered dinosaurs), so it was a bit of trivia/learning fun while searching for the ULTIMATE prize – the dinosaur eggs!
- Piñatas. And of course, our treasure hunt ended with finding the dinosaur eggs, which were actually piñatas. (We used this tutorial here. We’ve done this craft a few times for other dinosaur themed days because it’s so simple – you just need to allow time for drying). If you don’t have enough time to set up balloon piñatas, you could also make this a balloon popping activity with some pieces of candy inside the balloons ** dinosaur eggs ** instead!
GOODIE BAGS
For our goodie bags, we had a few dinosaur stickers, tattoos, pencils, and dinosaur figurines, We also had some “bigger items like the “Hatch Your Dinosaurs”. They’re similar to grow capsules but you’ll need to leave the ‘eggs’ in the water overnight. We had a few at various stages so guests could see “the process” and also included instructions. We also gave each guest a Dino Block Puzzle Egg 🙂
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you so much for checking out our party planning article. Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next celebration!
If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. Also, If you haven’t already and are still looking for that perfect party theme, feel free to check out some of our other party ideas: Party Guides and/or other Dinosaur Ideas!
Happy Party Planning 🙂
