Dinosaur Birthday Party
My daughter wanted to have a dinosaur party for her 7th birthday. We talked about a lot of options from ideas I found on the Internet, but here's what we ultimately did:
- Pith helmet decorating
- Dig pit with t-rex bones and other treasures
- Baking soda eggs
- Plaster and ice excavations
- Volcano cake
The pith helmets are pretty easy and straightforward. I bought some helmets (about $8 for a dozen on Amazon) and some stickers (a couple of foam packs from the dollar tree and some stickers from Target). Kids could decorate them as they chose. The regular stickers didn't seem to stick to the plastic helmets as well as the foam stickers, but they stuck well enough. I think I'd just get more foam stickers in the future though.
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| Pith helmet decorating station |
The dig pit was a planter box that we filled with sand. I put a couple of strips of poster board on the bottom and sides so the sand wouldn't escape easily. It was filled very nicely with about 100lbs of sand. I got 50lb bags from Home Depot at about $5 each. (We got a 3rd bag but didn't use it.)
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| Sand box |
We made plaster of paris t-rex bones using a sand mold which were about $5 from Oriental Trading Co. We used several cups of plaster of paris for a complete mold (maybe 8 cups?), but I learned they didn't need to be fully filled after the first one, though they did break more easily if I made them thinner. I ultimately used about 10-12 lbs of plaster of paris, bought in 8lb tubs for about $5 from Michael's (using a 50% off coupon from their website), for 3 complete t-rex molds.
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| Plastic sand molds used to make the bones |
I recommend putting down a newspaper or dropcloth before starting to work with the plaster of paris. We didn't the first round and I had to clean up a lot of plaster from the back patio. It also dried out my hands a lot so I wore disposable gloves the next time. Having not worked with plaster of paris since I was a kid, I forgot about these key details. :) Some pieces broke when we got them out of the molds, but I argued that's more authentic so it's fine. The final product was pretty neat, I think.
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| Plaster of Paris t-rex bones |
The kids really liked finding the bones in the sand. I also hid some "treasures" which were shells and glass gems from the Dollar Tree. (The kind you'd fill a vase with.) I used some ikea frames and some old screen (originally from Home Depot for $5) to make sifters, but that really wasn't needed. We also put some cheap shovels out but those were eventually broken and also not really needed. The kids liked just leaning into the pit and digging with their hands.
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| Bones, glass gems, and shells in the sand. |
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| They loved to dig in the sand. |
I also put the "eggs" into the dig pit, but I think those would have been fine just out on the table and not buried. (I had to keep replenishing the dig pit so that the first set of kids wouldn't get everything. It might have just been smarter to have those set out on the table.)
It was really easy to make the baking soda eggs. I got some tiny plastic dinosaurs (some from Dollar Tree, some from Party City, and some donated from our local Buy Nothing group), and made eggs around them with baking soda. I got a giant bag of baking soda for about $8 from Costco. I doubt we used even half of it for about 30 eggs. Just add a small amount of water to the baking soda, form an egg around the animal, let dry (usually 24 hours for us).
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| Baking soda egg. Now to get the small dino out! |
The kids could break into the eggs by using a paintbrush (they tried brushing and also jabbing with the back end) and I also put out vinegar as an option. They were able to get into it relatively easily and everyone squealed with glee when they got to their dinosaur-- even grandma! :)
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| Small dinosaurs in baking soda eggs. The vinegar makes it extra fun! |
Some kids were drawn to the dinosaur skeletons that were encased in plaster or ice. I don't think anyone successfully got any out of plaster but they were still fun to try and seemed to add an interesting decor. The skeletons were an Ebay find but also available on Amazon. The blocks are layers of plaster mixed with sand that I mixed in disposable baking dishes. I chose not to put out any chisel type tools because of the anticipated crowd (lots of young kids), but that'd be wise for other groups. Even though no one got a skeleton out, I still think it was a good party addition. It was cheap and easy since I was already working with plaster for the bones. Maybe I'd go heavier on the sand and use less plaster next time. :)
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| Dino skeletons stuck in sand and plaster layers |
The ice blocks were a pretty big hit. A few kids worked on them for probably an hour. I chose to leave it open-ended and see what they'd come up with. It was a chilly day or they might have been successful earlier. They mostly just brushed with one of the paintbrushes. Then tried brushing vinegar on them. Then I gave them some salt to help the melting process and they brushed that on. Then someone gave them warm water. Ultimately, a dad busted out a pocket tool and started beating away at it. :) Obviously cheap and easy to make. I filled a baby wipe container about 1/3 of the way and then added a few skeletons. A few hours later, I filled it another 1/3 and added a few more. Then later, I filled it the rest of the way. If I'd filled it all at once, the dinos would have all been floating at the top, partially submerged. I also put out some goggles as an option, which this little party guest chose to use while working on excavating the skeleton.
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| Excavating dino skeletons from the ice |
One of the biggest hits at the party was a volcano cake. I made 2 sheet cakes. One had the volcano and the other was just a normal sheet cake. Before I brought out the volcano cake, I cut up and pre-plated the other cake so it'd be really easy to pass out. The volcano cake is a sheet cake with a rice crispy treat volcano around a mini water bottle. I think if I were to do this again, I'd cut a bottle shaped hole in the cake so I wouldn't have to create such an enormous volcano, but this worked for us. The cake is a Duncan Hines swirl cake with salted caramel frosting. The volcano is rice crispy treats with a few chocolate chips mixed in for color. (This was a full original recipe. I didn't think I'd need that much, but I wanted the water bottle fully covered.) Then it's all covered in crushed graham crackers (maybe 1-2 total). The dinosaurs are just little plastic toys. To get it to erupt, we put small pieces of dry ice in the bottle (then sang Happy Birthday) then added hot water with strawberry jello mixed in.
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| Volcano cake |
You can see in the photo that the table is splattered with red jello as it shot out when it erupted. It worked really well. The cake got pretty soggy where it was soaked in jello, but it sort of tasted like a cake with fruit filling, so it wasn't terrible. I was glad I had another dry cake (already cut!) for the guests though.
Party favors were all the dinosaurs, bones, and gems they'd found/excavated (all in little orange cloth bags we'd passed out earlier), plus their pith hats they'd decorated, books, and small 3-d puzzles. (Wow, that seems like a lot now!) The small orange cloth bags were a Dollar Tree find: 3/$1. The books were ordered through the Scholastic book club at my daughter's school (6 for $6). The 3-d puzzles were found on ebay and were about 50 cents each. They probably weren't necessary but my kids really liked them so we thought others might, too.
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| Some of the party favors left at the end of the party. |
Overall, I think the party was a success!
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