Dinosaur Birthday Party (6 years old)

Dinosaur Party (6 years old)

So I am a little late in posting this, since my son turned six back in January, but anytime is a great time for a dinosaur birthday party! I honestly have loved every birthday party I have done for my kids, but this one was extra fun. I think it always helps when the birthday child is super excited about each little step along the way, and boy was he!

I loved this photo prop we got from Oriental Trading. All the kids had fun with it, and it was super cute. It did not come with a stand, so we taped it to our table legs, not perfect, but the price was right.

First off, I feel awful that I did not get more photos of all the little details. It was a busy week. There was Christmas, and the on the 28th my twin boys turned one, and Mr. T.'s birthday is on January 3rd. We had to do the party before we left out of town on vacation (a few days later) and so, we decided to do his friend party on New Years Day. I was a little worried about attendance, but thankfully most of the friends he invited came. :) We did the family party (for all three boys) the following day, so there was lots to be done. Hopefully the photos I have will suffice!

Many of the things we made for this party needed to be made at least a week before the party, and some of them I forgot to get started on, or rather 4 kids and Holibirthmas (what we affectionately call that time of Christmas and 3 Birthdays in 9 or so days) kept me distracted! So if you want to do some of these things, give yourself time, it is MUCH nicer that way!

Our opening activity was digging some dinosaur fossils.

I decided that this would be so much fun, to make our own treasure rocks with dino skeletons inside. I had seen some previously at the dollar store, ready made, but of course, could find none when it was birthday time. So I did lots of searching for a recipe for treasure rocks. Most recipes called for coffee grounds, and since we are not coffee drinkers, I kept looking. I finally found this one at Chef Tess Bakeresse. It worked well, but took a lot of work. Because my sweet son has a winter birthday, dirt is wet, as was our sand. So I was cooking dirt and sand in our oven to dry it out (again, time was not on my side). And I ordered super cute dino skeleton toys from Oriental Trading, but they ended up being MUCH bigger (5.5") than I expected, so I kept making more and more of our concoction to cover the "fossils". And then we baked them, and baked them, and let them dry, and it took SO MUCH TIME. These I had planned ahead some, and so they sat for maybe a week before the party and dried some more, maybe too much. ha ha! Anyhow, as the kids came in we led them to a table to dig their fossils. The fossil rocks ended up looking very much like, well, poop. Oh well. I had kid hammers and paint brushes ($ store), and other random tools to help them break open, and a little help from grown up hands to twist them a little to break the exterior. But they all enjoyed it and broke open at least two.

We also made a salt dough volcano for an activity at the party.

This required A LOT more dough that I had thought. I think I made 3 or 4 batches. Form your volcano around a small plastic water bottle, and then bake on a low temp in the oven, or leave out for days, or both. lol. (there are some good instructions here: here) Then we (and by we, I mean my sweet husband) painted it. Then I let the kids take turns pouring in the ingredients to make it "erupt".

warm water
squirt of dish soap
2 tsp baking soda
food coloring
and then for the eruption add vinegar.

I think we did this at least twice at each party.


Dinosaur Egg Pinata: We also made a pinata, because my kids thoroughly enjoy the pinata making process and the excitement of breaking them open. This was the easiest birthday pinata ever, because it was just the balloon shape with nothing added besides a little paint. We added some small dino toys from the $store and of course, candy.

The cake was fun, but did not turn out as planned. I felt like it looked a mess, but Mr. T. LOVED it, so that is all that matters. I have learned that I am not a perfectionist, and this works to my advantage come birthday party time. My kids think their cakes and other things are awesome, and I do not have the time to spend to make it all perfect, so it works for all of us! :)

On to the cake:
I had meant to made a dinosaur scene with some of my son's plastic dinos, and include a cake volcano on the cake. My cake volcano did not work well. I made a sheet cake and frosted it brown. I also made a round cake and a smaller round cake to stack on it. Once on the cake, it just did not look volcano-ish, so I decided to carve it.

Not a good idea for a moist cake and someone who is not a cake expert. I was getting quite frustrated at this point, and in came my hubs, who just helped me haphazardly place pieces of cake and globs of frosting to somewhat resemble a globby volcano (and reassured me it did that it was just fine!). We added some crushed graham cracker crumbs to the base to make it sandy.



My favorite part of this cake, both in looks and making it was the volcano spewing. This was a lot of fun. I found directions at Family Fun. I bought some cinnamon candy at the dollar store and melted it.


You have to melt it slowly and on a low temp, but not too low, or you are just stirring candy in a pot, so I had to turn it up a bit after my husband point out that after 5 minutes it should probably be melted a bit. ha ha!


It starts to get really sticky, and then more like liquid.

And then I just drizzled it onto aluminum foil in what I thought looked like lava spewing. Then you let it harden and stick into the cake. My son and his friends LOVED this. :) They all wanted to eat a piece of the volcano, but most decided after one lick of cinnamon candy that they wanted no more.

I included another pic of my holding it, so you can see the size.

Then I asked Mr. T. to go get some small toy dinosaurs from his toy box to put on the cake. He came back with much larger and less realistic dinos than I had in mind, but it was his cake, so we washed them up and I let him place them on.


Because his family party was the next day, I saved some of the volcano pieces and remade the volcano. It looks like it finished spewing, but still fun. And we had smaller dinosaurs on the cake then as well.

Paper Mache Dinosaur Egg Loot Bags
I thought it would be a grand idea to have the loot bags be dino eggs. I do think it worked well and was fun, and kept their loot a secret until they were home. But it is time consuming. My fave paper mache recipe is here. This is the method I use. Because it was a crunch for time, the eggs did not have as many layers as I had wanted to, maybe 2-3 thin layers, so once we popped the balloons, some of the eggs dimpled a bit. After popping the balloon I cut a 2 in (or so) square hole to insert the loot. I found some great stuff at Oriental And then, the eggs soaked up a TON of paint. I think we went through 3 cans of white spray paint for the base coat. That was smelly as well. We did it in the unfinished part of our basement and I think my sweet hubs may have got a little high from all the fumes, bless his heart for working so hard for me! Then Mr. T., myself, and Miss B. painted all kinds of fun colors and designs on the eggs.

We made a TON of these! I think we made 12, because even though we only had 4-5 kids at the party, we had a family party the next day, and some good friends coming as well. My son helped paint a few, but mostly my daughter, the artiste helped me paint them. In their "loot eggs" we included these cute foam dino masks (apparently one of the only pics I took, and not a great one, sorry!), dino sticker scenes, small dinos, dino fruit snacks, and some candy. Most of the stuff I got from Oriental Trading.

Hopefully this is helpful to you for your dino-riffic party!