Diggin’ the Dino Birthday Party – Part 5: Games

By far Ms M’s favorite part of the party were the games. The party attendees were either 4 (almost 4) or 6 to 6 1/2. So The games had to work for both age groups, not to hard for the 4 year olds and not to babyish for the 6 year olds. I am pretty sure we found the right mix because the kids all had a BLAST.

DINO NECKLACE

First up was the crafting. I like to do the craft first for many reasons:

1. It gives the kids something to do while waiting for all the party guests to arrive.
2. It give the kids time to warm up to each other
3. The kids are still willing to sit still and do a craft because they haven’t started running around like crazy dinosaurs yet.

For the craft we decided to do dinosaur necklaces. We used air dry clay that I rolled out between two zip top bags. I cut out the pendant with a biscut cutter and the hole with a straw. The kids used tiny dinosaurs to make imprints of the dinos feet and some used the side of the dino too.

I used REALLY large jump rings (I actually think they were for chain mail.) to put the pendants on rainbow cording. The ends of the cording were sealed by an adult with a flame. The kids added a few colored beads and then we just tied a square knot. Each necklace was put in a zip top bag with their name and added to their goodie bag.

The parents were given instructions to take them out when they got home and leave them over night to dry. Ours actually took a few days to dry out. But they turned out really cool.

Dino Dig

Next up was a dinosaur dig. I asked the kids if they knew what a scientist who looks for dinosaur bones was called. It took a couple of tries but they did come up with paleontologist.

Each child got their own bin with sand and dinos. That way each child got the same number of dino finds and the quick kids didn’t get everything. Each bin had one dinosaur skeleton and 3 little toy dinosaurs. Once the dinos were brushed off they were added to the kids goodie bags.

Dinosaur Expedition

I had the kids put their goodie bags away and we started the next game. I told them, “Since you guys are such good paleontologists I have another challenge for you. We need to find more dinosaurs. But this time instead of finding dinosaur bones, we need to find dinosaur parts.”
“The first thing you need to find are some dinosaur feet. You will be able to find them where the dinos have their nest.”

I tried to find the wildest spots in the yard to hide the dinosaur parts. And the flowering rhubarb plant was perfect.

The feet (and the rest of the dino costume) were made from felt and elastic. The feet had elastic across the back and a loop on the bottom so they would slide right over the top of the kids shoes.
“Now you must travel to the Jurassic jungle to find what every dinosaur needs… a tail” This guy was so adorable. He was so excited about his dinosaur tail that he started to do a dinosaur dance and kept trying to turn around and see his tail wiggling.
“The last dinosaur part that you need is a mask. For this you must travel to the cretaceous caverns”

“OH NO! I don’t think you are paleontologists any more! I think you have turned into DINOSAURS!!!!!!” Here are the kids giving me their best dinosaur roar.

Feed the T Rex

“Now that you are dinosaurs there is one thing that is VERY important. Keeping T Rex fed. But you don’t want to get too close or he’ll eat you instead of the food we have for him.” The kids were given felt T bone steak bean bags to try and toss them in T Rex’s mouth.

Save the Dinosaur Egg

“The second thing that is important to dinosaurs is to protect the eggs. These dinosaur eggs are in a dangerous volcano and earthquake area. The eggs needed to be transported to a more safe location.”
Each kid was given a plastic spoon and a dino egg. They were shown where the safe zone was.

They took their mission VERY seriously. It was so adorable.

Herbivores and Carnivores

The last game was simply a dinosaur version of tag. We talked about what both herbivore and carnivores eat and the type of teeth each have. Then I explained the game was just like tag. There would be one carnivore and everyone else was a herbivore. The carnivore had to catch the herbivores and the herbivores needed to run away. The kids has a blast playing all the games and were all ready for some dino food. I know Ms M loved her party because almost every day she asks if we can have the party again this weekend.

Other dino party posts:

• Diggin’ the Dino Birthday Party – Part 1: Invitation
• Diggin’ the Dino Birthday Party – Part 2: Decorations
• Diggin’ the Dino Birthday Party – Part 3: Shirts
• Diggin’ the Dino Birthday Party – Part 4: Food