Plan Your Child's Dinosaur
Birthday Party with Ease!

Here are some fun and easy ideas to help you plan your child's next dinosaur birthday party. Your child's party should be just as much fun for you to plan as it is for your child to celebrate. Why not try some of the great ideas to help you enjoy it too?

Everything You Need for a Dinosaur Party:

Dinosaur Party Ideas and Tips
Games and Activities
Party Food Ideas
Dinosaur Cake Ideas
Prehistoric Party Invitation and Wording Ideas
Decorations and Party Favors

Keep it Simple Dinosaur Birthday Party Ideas

When planning activities for this party, keep in mind the target age that will be coming to the party. It is very easy to plan activities for this theme that are more for toddlers, but if you focus on the correct age, you will keep your activities age appropriate and fun.

It is important to keep everything for this party focused on the dinosaur birthday party theme. There are so many dinosaur items to use for this theme available that finding items is really very easy. When planning my son's dinosaur birthday party, I used ready available items such as plastic Easter eggs, miniature toy dinosaurs found in most toy sections at your favorite discount store, and dinosaur fruit snacks found at your favorite grocery store. This is a very fun and easy party to plan if you stay focused on the target age and your theme.

Ideas for Games and Activities

Set the tone for a roaring good time by cutting out big dinosaur footprints. Lay them out leading from the driveway or street to your front door.
At your front door have a big dinosaur cut-out greeting your guests. This great party decoration can be found at www.shindigz.com. Tape a sign to the dinosaur that says, "Roarrrrr! Happy Birthday, ____________________!" You can even tie balloons to the dinosaur. Very cute and what a fun way to set the tone for your dinosaur birthday party.
When your guests get to the door, have a basket or container filled with paleontologist hats for the your guests to wear and then take home at the end of the party.

When planning the games for your dinosaur birthday party, think, "BIG!" Your guests will be expecting everything to be BIG at this party. Here are some easy games that will provide BIG fun for your dinosaur birthday party.

Dino Dig- Fill a baby swimming pool with sand or use an existing sand box that you already have. Hide dinosaur toys and trinkets in the sand. Some fun things to hide include dinosaur eggs (plastic Easter eggs stuffed with little toy dinosaurs or dinosaur fruit snacks), dinosaur beach toys that look like the bones of a dinosaur, etc. Give each little paleontologist their own shovel and paintbrush. Let your guests keep what they find. If you are going to let your guests take home all of the fun paleontologist tools (shovels and paintbrushes), then you might want to write their names on them as they arrive or at the beginning of this fun activity.

Dinosaur Dress-Up- This is such a cute activity, especially if you have guests that are under five years old. Get a really cute dinosaur costume and stand by a tree or in a grassy area. Take each guest's picture with the dinosaur costume on while they are standing or posing next to the tree or in the grassy area. Send this picture with their thank you card that says, "Thank you for a roaring good birthday!"

Tyrannosaurus Tag- This fun game is just like freeze tag, except the person that is "it" is the t-rex. The possibilities for this game are endless. You could have the child that is the t-rex wear a dinosaur costume. You could have the child that is "it" wear a dinosaur tail made out of construction paper. You could just tape a picture of a t-rex onto the child's shirt. Let your imagination run wild. This game was the highlight of our party when we used an old dinosaur costume for the t-rex.

Dinosaur Fun Facts- This activity is for school-age kids. Make matching pictures of dinosaurs. On one picture have a fun fact about a certain type of dinosaur. Keep the other matching picture blank. Pass the blank pictures out to the guests while you keep the fact pictures with you in a stack. Play "Guess What I Am!" Each fact should start with the words, "I am ________________." For example, "I am a herbivore. I am 9.5 feet tall and 26 feet long. I weigh 14, 000 pounds and lived in the late cretaceous period. I lived in Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Canada. I had a beak like a parrot and three horns on my head. What am I?" When the person with that picture calls the name out, you can turn your card around and show the match. A variation of this game would be to give each guest a paper with all the dinosaurs names and pictures on them and have them call out the correct dinosaur name by looking at their paper instead of just having one single card. This is great fun for older kids. Another thing you could do if you are pretty artistic and enthusiastic is to have big pictures of dinosaurs hanging all around the party area. The kids could then just look on the wall for the dinosaur that you are describing. A great source for an activity like this one is www.dinodictionary.com.

Are You Bigger Than a Dinosaur?- Cut out a dinosaur that is as tall as the birthday girl or boy's favorite dinosaur. Pin or tape this cut-out onto a tree or a wall. Have each guest stand next to the cut-out and mark their height on the dinosaur cut-out. Show the kids which guest is closest to the height of the dinosaur. No one really comes close, but it is fun to try, especially for the little ones. When you are finished tell your guests the actual height of the dinosaur. Again a great resource for this type of activity is www.dinodictionary.com. You will find all the dinosaur facts you need at this site.

Dinosaur Birthday Party Ideas for Food

When preparing food for your dinosaur birthday party, you need to think outside the box. Kids have a great imagination and will go with whatever you present to them. If you say that they are eating boulders and they are really eating doughnut holes, then they will believe or at least pretend that this is what they are really eating. Here are some fun dinosaur birthday party food ideas. These foods are just ordinary foods with a new name. When I present food this way, I usually make up a little name card in the shape of the theme that I am working with. I then print or type the name of the food on the little name card and place the card by the food that it describes. This is fun. It dresses up your table according to your theme and is very easy. When thinking of which foods you want to serve, just come up with a menu of your choice and find dinosaur names to add to it. Very easy!

Jurassic Park Juice- Use any juice for this tasty drink. Anything green would probably go over well. There is no fancy recipe here. It is all in the name.
Boulders- Just throw some doughnut holes into a bowl and you are good to go.
Brachiosaurus Burgers- Just plain old hamburgers with a new name.
Velociraptor Vegetables - What a great way to get your party guests to eat healthy.
T-Rex Taters - This is just plain old tater tots or french fries.
PINACOSAURUS Pizza - Just your average pizza.

Dinosaur Birthday Party Cake Ideas

Dinosaur Cupcakes - The cake for a dinosaur birthday party is one of the easiest to make ever. When we had my son's dinosaur birthday party, the cake was the easiest part of the party. All I did was make cupcakes and ice them with chocolate frosting. I dyed coconut green with green food coloring and sprinkled that on top of the frosted cupcakes. (Be sure to leave some without the coconut for those guests who aren't too fond of coconut or who are allergic to it.) I then topped each cupcake with a miniature toy dinosaur just as you would find at a bakery when they top the cupcakes with little birthday picks or rings.

I then covered the table with a dinosaur themed tablecloth which incidentally had pictures of trees on it as well. Very cool! I sprinkled the extra coconut all over the table and then set the cupcakes out all over the table. I also found a pack of miniature dinosaurs that included some miniature trees in it as well. I also set the trees around the table as well. I then set the food and name cards on the table. This was one of the cutest and easiest birthday table settings that I have ever created for one of my kids' birthday parties. Easy! Easy! Easy!

Dinosaur Birthday Party Mementos

Please see our birthday traditions page for some great ideas for mementos for your little birthday girl or boy. Here are some great memento ideas for a dinosaur birthday party.

Dinosaur Birthday Hat - One great memento for this day would be to give your birthday girl or boy a special dinosaur birthday hat to wear on this day. Elope has some great dinosaur hats. One of the things that I love about Elope's hats is that many of them have a secret pocket inside that comes with a special message inside. You can replace the message that it comes with with a special birthday message from you.

Dinosaur Puppet - Another fun memento for a dinosaur birthday is a stuffed dinosaur puppet. My son has one of these. It is always so much fun to add a different puppet to his puppet collection. I love it when he tries to remember where and when he got each one of them. This is a fun way to remember special days such as birthday parties as well as fun family trips, etc.

Dinosaur Birthday Party Invitation Wording and Ideas

Anything goes when it comes to the invitations for your child's dinosaur birthday party. There are some pretty cute store-bought invitations for you to choose from and making your own can be easy and fun as well. An easy and cute option would be to use dinosaur stationary paper and print the invite directly on the paper. Another possibility would be to type out your invitation in the center of your favorite colored card stock paper. Then trace an outline of a dinosaur around the invitation wording and cut it out. When you're done, your invitations will look like they are printed on dinosaur-shaped paper.

The following is an example of invitation wording you can use for your next dinosaur birthday party. It is simple and to the point, but sure to get your guests excited about having a fun time.

"__________________ is having a dinosaur party!

Come join us for a roaring good time!"

Who ________________________

Where_______________________

When________________________

Time_________________________

Please RSVP ____________________________

Dinosaur Birthday Party Traditions

Please see our birthday traditions page for some great traditions. Traditions are what kids remember when they get older. Why not start your own with this birthday. Your kids are never too old to begin some family traditions that they will remember, ask for over and over, look forward to, and pass on to their own children one day.

By following this dinosaur birthday party plan, your sure to have a fun and easy time planning for your child's big day. Remember, dinosaur birthday parties are not just for boys or toddlers. Any child young or old can have a fun dinosaur birthday party. Just remember to think "BIG" and stay focused on the theme and the age of your guests. I hope you have a roaring good time!

Dinosaur Birthday Party Favors

If you have done your work ahead of time, there really shouldn't be much thought that you have to put into what to give your guests as party favors for your dinosaur birthday party. If you let them keep the paleontologist hat, paintbrush or shovel. dinosaur fruit snacks, and miniature toy dinosaurs found in the dino dig activity or off of the top of their cupcake, there will be more than enough treats for everyone to take home. Just make sure to have a bag with names on them setting out on your fire place or on the porch that everyone can put their favors in throughout the party so that nobody gets their items mixed up with someone else's things. A great way to label the bags is to glue a different dinosaur picture onto each person's bag and then put their name on it when they arrive. Not only can you tell which bag belongs to which person by their names, but the younger guests can identify their own bag by the picture of the dinosaur.