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.
The dig pit was a planter box that we filled with sand (2 50lb bags from Home Depot at about $5 each). I 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) for 3 complete t-rex molds. Some pieces broke when we got them out of the molds, but I argued that's more authentic so it's fine. 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. :) The final product was pretty neat, I think.
The kids really liked finding the bones in the sand. I also hid some "treasures" which were shells and glass beads from the Dollar Tree. (The kind you'd fill a vase with. It's a bag of like 50 for $1) I used some idea 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 broken and also not really needed. The kids liked just leaning in and digging with their hands.
I also put the "eggs" into the dig pit, but I think those would have been fine out on the table. I got some tiny plastic dinosaurs, some from Dollar Tree and 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 35 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).
My kids made most of the eggs by themselves. I recommend cleaning up right away or the baking soda dries annoyingly to the work space. It's not too hard to clean up, but easier when wet. And of course vinegar will help, too. All my eggs were white, but I think a little food coloring would be an easy addition to make them more interesting.
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! :)
Some kids were drawn to the dino 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. I chose not to put out any chisel type tools because of the anticipated crowd, but that'd be wise for other groups. This was still pretty cheap and easy though so a worthwhile addition.
The ice blocks were a pretty big hit. A few kids worked on them for probably an hour. 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.
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. 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.
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 cake (already cut!) for the guests though.
Overall, I think the party was a success!
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