Dinosaur Party

As previously mentioned there are not a lot of photos for this party because I got so busy with the running of the actual party.

It was the first party for my son that we invited a lot of friends to.I think there were between 15 and 20 kids in attendance.  I chose a dinosaur theme because there were a lot of cheap and easy ways to decorate and things to put in lootbags, and easy activities to do.

I used the above graphic for my son's invitations but I don't own it so shhhhhhhh!
I printed the party details on the right side of the graphic.

For this party it might have even been too many activities, but I know this age group (5 year olds) has a short attention span and I wanted to make sure I kept everyone engaged.
Also, because we did this at my house which is a relatively small space I knew it would be difficult to have everyone doing one activity at a time, so I created different activity centres that would host 4 - 5 kids and then just had everyone rotate.

It so sad that I didn't have time to take proper pictures of the decorations because they were pretty cool.
My husband was able to make large dinosaur standees which we tied to the outside of the house.

Inside the house I had lots of green streamers hanging from the ceiling to give the feeling of vines.  We made a pre-historic volcano out of paper mache which was both a decorative table centre piece and doubled as an activity.  I made the volcano with a jar inside which I filled with baking soda, and channeling grade school science experiments we gathered all the kids around and poured vinegar that I had tinted red with food colouring and watched it explode!
The kids thought that was pretty cool!

  

The plastic dinosaurs I purchased at a local dollar store
and just hot glued to the cardboard base. The base curled after it dried and in hindsight I should have weighed it down so that
it would dry flat.


Some of the activities I had the kids doing (in rotation with 4 - 5 kids per "centre") were:
1) a fossil dig : two fossil eggs (from the dollar store) they had to carefully chip away at this sand egg to try to uncover a toy dino inside it.  It was pretty messy so I was glad I had each "fossil" in a tray because it just became a fine sand once the fossil was uncovered.
2) Make a dino picture with markers and dinosaur stamps and a washable ink stamp pad.
3) A dinosaur dig : we took the kids to a sand pit just up the street where I had my husband bury quite a few plastic easter eggs with plastic dinosaurs inside them.  Each child got a shovel and pail and was directed to the "excavation site" which we marked off with pylons and they were able to dig until all the eggs were found.
4) An obstacle relay race holding a dinosaur egg with a spoon
5) painting dinosaur figurines
6) Dino egg toss. They had to stand at a marked line and try to get as many plastic dinosaur eggs into a basket.
7) We had a table set up with dinosaur tattoos and wet cloths so each child could get a couple of temporary tattoos.

To make sure everything ran smoothly, I recruited several family members and a friend to help man the activity centres and direct the kids.
I also had prepared a cardboard tray for each child to put all their crafts and goodies in. (The kind underneath a flat of waterbottles).

And for the cupcakes, I iced the tops with green icing and sprinkled with sweetened shredded coconut which I tinted with green food colouring for grass. Then I put plastic dinos or Cadburys Mini eggs on top.