Creative Dinosaur Birthday Parties

A dinosaur birthday party is huge fun! Dinosaurs often fascinate young boys and girls alike. You can easily create a birthday-osaurus theme.

Dinosaur birthday party cake or cupcakes

You can create individual cupcakes with chocolate frosting and a "little bit" of brown sugar sprinkles to look like sand. Top with an a small dinosaur figure that you can find in tubes sold at Michael's crafts stores, party stores, dollar stores or online at Oriental Trading Co.

Alternatively you can create a cake with green (grass), blue (water and/or sky) and chocolate with brown sugar sprinkles for sand. Top with plastic dinosaurs all over. Want to be really creative? Add cupcakes upside down and surround with frosting and orange "lava" to create volcanoes.

Dinosaur party hats

Super creative version:

Fold paper in half and cut at a zigzag to create 2 dimensional plates. Tape them down to the back of the party hat. You can also add paper horns or spikes. Every dinosaur hat can be different.

Super easy version:

Take permanent markers and draw on spikes, horns, wrinkles and large fierce eyes.

Dinosaur party games

For young children keep games simple. Consider:

Have a dinosaur treasure hunt in a sandbox.

If you have a sandbox and the weather is favorable, burying dinosaurs and letting kids dig them up and keep them is fun. Set some boundaries such as "you can find five dinosaurs," and have just two or three guests digging at a time.

Pin the tail (or the horn) on the dinosaur.

If you want to avoid the whole covering the eyes spinning around version for very young children simply have a the dinosaur poster, a variety of add ons such as spots, spikes, plates, horns, eyes, tails and some glue dots. It will make a fun keepsake for your child to remember their dinosaur party.

Play Simon the Dinosaur says.

Have your guest run fast, stomp, fly, claw, roar or anything you'd do if you were a dinosaur! This game is super easy, free and lets little partiers get their wiggles out.

Find dinosaur trivia from Dinosaur Dan in Highlights Magazine.

Highlights Magazine, available at your local library, has an "ask Dino-Dan column" where he answers kid's questions about dinosaurs. It's fun to ask the questions and share some trivia while the kids are enjoying their dinosaur snacks.

Dinosaur Party favor ideas

Super creative:

Are you up for paper mache dinosaur eggs? Buy tiny dinosaurs and fit them into wide mouth balloons. Cover the balloons with strips of newspaper dipped in half water and half glue. Let them rest to dry by sitting them on (and a bit in) jars, boxes and canisters from your recycling bin. Think large jars, oatmeal boxes, wipe boxes, de-topped tissue boxes. You, and your child of course, can paint the dinosaur egg party favors different colors or not as kids have such amazing imaginations. Hand the dinosaur egg party favors out as each guest leaves she can keep the egg as long as she wants and hatch it when she's ready.

Super easy:

Decorate paper lunch bags, which are a lot more eco-friendly than plastic goody bags, with dinosaur stickers, drawings, stamps or cut outs of dinosaur printable. Inside consider useful party favors like dinosaur soaps, dinosaur pencils or dinosaur cookie cutters.

Dinosaur party food ideas

Serve up a platter of Tyrannosaurus Rex teeth, a.k.a. banana halves. Sure, they could even be dipped in chocolate and semi-frozen.

Serve popcorn (or snack mix) in "dinosaur claws." Save paper bags and cut out large square sections. Roll them into cones and tape. Stack the cones and have a scooper ready to fill the dinosaur claws for your ferocious little party guests.