Throw a prehistoric birthday bash your little T-Rex will never forget with our Dinosaur Party Ideas! Read on for general party planning tips as well as great dinosaur decorating ideas, food, game, and activity suggestions.

• Dinosaur posters
• a small sand bucket for each guest, if they will be digging for dinosaur bones as an activity
• bags of Play sand to hide the bones
• plastic eggs, if you will be using a dinosaur egg hunt activity
• Disposable Cameras

• Put each invitation inside a large plastic egg and call it a dinosaur egg. Place the plastic egg inside a clear cellophane bag with some green easter grass and a small dinosaur toy, tie it closed with ribbon, and deliver to your guests.
• Cut out dinosaur footprints from construction paper and write the party details on one side.
• Fold any color construction paper in half to create a card, and draw the shape of an egg breaking open on the cover. Then place a dinosaur sticker climbing out of the egg, and add all the party details to the inside.
• Fold construction paper in half to create a card, and decorate the front with foam dinosaurs from the craft store. Add the party details inside.
• Thinly roll out some play dough and cut bone shapes with a small cookie cutter. Let them dry until firm, and then glue a bone to the front of each invitation.
• Use creative wording to describe the party details. You can use our example below, or write your own wording:
  
  You’re Invited to a Dino-mite Party!
  Tyrannosaur-(birthday child’s name) is Turning (age)
  Come to the Dinosaur Nesting Grounds: (give party date, time, and address)
  Don’t Be Extinct! RSVP to the prehistoric parents: (phone number)
  
• Seal the envelopes with dinosaur stickers.
• For a special touch, let us print personalized invitations for you! We’ll include your child’s name and all the party details, with a background design that complements your dinosaur party theme. You can also take a look at the blank invitations we offer. These are quick to fill in and mail, which is perfect when you want to get your invitations out quickly. Check out all of our Dinosaur Party Invitations.

• Make inexpensive caveman costumes for your guests to wear using faux fur or animal print fabric and rope belts. (No sewing required!) Just cut a hole in the center of each piece of fabric to fit a child's head, drape the cut fabric over the children, and secure with a rope belt tied around the waist.
• Draw large dinosaur footprints in chalk on the pavement leading to your door.
• Paint a large appliance box to look like the entrance to Jurassic Park. Place it in front of your door or in the yard and let guests walk through it to enter the party.
• Make a banner saying “Welcome to the (your last name) Dinosaur Dig” and hang it near the party entrance. See our selection of Dinosaur Banners and let us do the work for you!
• Use your child's toy dinosaurs to decorate the party area! Group them together on tables, and place some dinosaurs around the cake plate.
• Make a volcano centerpiece (see Erupting Volcano activity), and place dry ice in the center to create the effect of steam rising.
• Cut large dinosaur footprints from brown paper grocery bags and place them on the floor and walls around the party area.
• Decorate with big rocks and ferns. You can use wide green crepe paper to cut out fern leaves if you don't have access to live ones.
• Let the kids be cave men and create their own drawings on a large cardboard box! Cut the box open so more sides are available, and set out crayons and washable markers. This could be a good way to start the party, while you wait for all the guests to arrive. Be sure to take photos of the guests in front of their creation!
• Balloons always say “Party” to children! Tie groups of helium balloons together and anchor them in place with balloon weights. For greater impact, combine dinosaur shaped balloons with our colorful latex balloons. Tie a balloon to the back of each chair, and tie a group of five balloons to the birthday child’s chair!
• Build a jungle room with paper streamers! Twist three lengths of green streamers together to create a vine shape, and attach to the ceilings and walls in a criss cross pattern. Then use brown paper grocery bags stuffed with newspaper to create a pile of rocks, and place some toy dinosaurs on top. Add any ferns or houseplants you may own to the area for added effect.
• Hang more green streamers in doorways to create a curtain for the children to walk through.
• Hang dinosaur posters on the walls at a child’s eye level.
• Ask an older child or adult to make balloon dinosaurs for the children. Use our easy Balloon Animals Kit, which includes an instruction book, balloons, and balloon inflator. There’s no need to master the entire book! One or two basic shapes will delight young children. The giraffe shape can be called a T-Rex or Brachiosaurus, or use your own ideas to adapt some of the ten animal shapes into dinosaurs.
• Consider a pull-string piñata if you would rather not have small children swinging a bat. We offer a selection of traditional and pull-string pinatas, but any traditional piñata can be converted to a pull-string using our easy instructions.
• Play Flintstones music. There is also a great children's singing duo called "Trout Fishing in America" (that's really their name) that has some very funny dinosaur songs. Their tapes can be found at online or local book and music stores.
• For one-stop decorating, use one of our Dinosaur Party Boxes, which come filled with dinosaur themed plates, napkins, cups, a table cover, streamers, balloons, and more.
• Or see our other Dinosaur Party Decorations for more quick and easy decorating choices!

• Decorate the food table with your houseplants, dinosaur figures, and large rocks.
• Label the food with creative dinosaur related names, and the children will feel like they are eating prehistoric food! Some fun ideas to serve could be pretzel rods as Dinosaur Bones, hot dogs as Dino Dogs, hamburgers as Tyrannosaurus Burgers, and tater tots or grapes as Dino Eggs. And how about adding some Hot Lava ketchup!
• Cut sandwiches or slices of cheese using a bone or dinosaur shaped cookie cutter.
• Pterodactyl Chicken Wings - Wash wings and dry. Hold onto wing tips and spread them to look like they're flying. Dip Wings in barbecue sauce and place on foil lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Turn wings carefully and bake for another 15 - 20 minutes.
• Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets are often available in the frozen food section of the grocery store.
• Label the drinks as Swamp Water.
• Serve a vegetable tray and dip for the herbivore dinosaurs!
• Make red Jell-O jigglers cut into shapes, and name them Lava Rocks.
• Serve sugar cookies made with a dinosaur cookie cutter and green frosting.
• Make cups of Dinosaur Bones Stuck in the Mud! Hide a few pieces of bone shaped candy in a cup of chocolate pudding, and sprinkle crushed chocolate cookies on top as the “dirt”. This also works well with vanilla pudding and crushed vanilla wafers on top as “sand”. Tell the guests it is a dinosaur bone stuck in the mud (or stuck in the sand, if using vanilla pudding), and let them eat their way to the candy bones.
• Serve drinks with shaped silly straws.
• We have four terrific birthday cake ideas for you!
  
  
  1. Make an easy Volcano Birthday Cake by laying a bundt cake on top of a 9” square cake. Completely cover the cake with chocolate frosting, and then slowly pour orange frosting around the top to resemble lava flowing out of a volcano. Orange frosting can be made by adding red and yellow food coloring to a can of white frosting.
  2. Create a Dinosaur Nesting Grounds Cake using small plastic trees, dinosaurs, and jelly beans. First make or purchase a 9”x13” cake, and cover it with chocolate frosting. Next, scatter crushed cookies over the top as dirt. Place small toy dinosaurs and plastic trees on top of the cake to create the scene. Build a dinosaur nest in one area with more crushed cookies, and place jelly beans in the middle as the eggs. Add another toy dinosaur nearby as the mother guarding her nest!
  3. Or make an easy Dinosaur Egg Birthday Cake from a two layer round cake. Stack the two layers with frosting in the middle. Then use a knife to cut it in half using a zig zag pattern, to resemble an egg cracking open. Pull the two sides slightly apart and frost the cake with white icing. Place a toy dinosaur on the cake plate in the middle of the crack, as if it were hatching!
  4. Our Volcano Chocolate Cake can be made with three or four round cake layers. Frost between layers and stack, and then use a knife to cut the layers into an inverted cone shape. Next, frost the outside with chocolate frosting and chill for one hour. Sprinkle the cake with crushed Oreos and broken red lollipop pieces. Then pour strawberry ice cream shell topping (it hardens when it makes contact with cold icing) down the sides of the cake to resemble flowing lava, and you're done!.



• Serve scoops of ice cream in waffle cone bowls and call it a Volcano. Use chocolate sauce as the “lava”.