Dinosaur Theme -5yr- Create-A-Saurus

For my son's 5th BD, he chose a dinosaur theme, and I think it came out really well and a lot of fun. 

We sent out dinosaur invitations from the party store, and I decorated the back yard fence and swing set with green and yellow streamers and balloons, and a goldish colored tablecloth (was going to do green, but the gold really contrasted so nicely with the plates).  We had dino plates, napkins, and cups, of course. 

When his guests first arrived, we did "Create-A-Saurus".  What I had done was draw a bunch of different kinds of dinosaurs on big stock paper, making sure I always started the necks and tails from the same place on the paper.  Then I cut them into three pieces, head/neck, body and tail.  I wrote the names of the dinosaurs on the backs of all three sections.  I shuffled them up and made threee stacks of these and told the kids to take one from each, so they each had a head, body and tail.  I taped them together and turned them loose to decorate them however they wanted. 

They all matched up good since I had taken care to start the necks and tails on the same places for each of them.  After a certain amount of time I stopped them to give prizes (they weren't done, but we had to move on).  I had a prize for each, with categories like "weirdest dino", "scariest, cutest, most colorful, most original", etc.  We made up names based on a combination from the names on the back like spinchiosaurus from a spinosaurus, brachiosaurus and stegosaurus combo.  Prizes were dinosaurs from my sons' collections of plastic dinos, which is quite large.  This was a good way for us to weed some of them out. 

Next activity was a dino egg scavenger hunt.  I told them they were all paleontologists that had to go gather dino eggs to take to the museum to study.  But they were all located in the mysterious woods, and they needed to be careful, as there had been reported sightings of some mysterious prehistoric-type beast.  Then I sent them in the woods (a little patch in our backyard) with bags to collect eggs. 

The eggs were from Oriental Trading, and were little plastic, bumpy, colorful eggs that had little dinos in them, great find!  I put green felt "footsteps" in the woods, and also all our bigger dinos, snakes and lizards scattered throughout.  When it looked like the kids had found all the eggs, I signalled for my hubby to run out with a mask and chase them all around, which was loads of fun!  I was laughing so hard, and so were they!  They all counted their eggs and the kid with the most got another dino prize. 

Next activity was a dino pinata, which was filled with candy and little dino things like finger puppets, erasers, stickers, etc. 

At this point we broke for cake and presents, as the next two things were water activities.  For the cake I made a 13x9 cake frosted with choc. Icing.  I made a mini-bundt (it's about 3 or 4" in diameter) that I placed in the middle.  That I frosted with yellow and orange icing flowing out of the top, so it looked like a volcano.  I placed little dinos around the bottom of the volcano, and put the candles on top of the bundt.  Looked great! 

After cake and presents, we went out to where our "kiddie pool" is, and I had set up "egg/nest relay".  The kids were all in swim suits, so it was OK for them to get wet.  I had two big buckets full of water balloons, and I made two teams of kids, in lines stretched from the buckets to the pool.  At go, the first kid got a balloon out of each bucket, and tossed it to the next kid, and on down the line till it was tossed into the pool.  When the last of the balloons were in the pool, that team was the winner, and they each got dino prizes.  This was a lot of fun, and of course the kids all got plenty wet b/c a lot of the balloons broke when being tossed. 

The last game was called plesiosaurus pond.  They all got in the pool, and there were buckets stationed all around the pool, one for each kid.  At go, all the "plesiosaurus'" had to get as many "fish" (water balloons floating in the pool) into their respective buckets as they could.  They all had so much fun with this, racing around trying to pick up these slippery balloons.  Winner was the one who got the most balloons in their bucket, and they got a dino for a prize.  Kids played in the pool till their rides showed up, so there was no need to "entertain" them after the last game. 

Goody bags were from Oriental Trading (mostly) and included dino gliders, dino squirters, dino stickers, dino tattoos, and a couple other things.  Also, glow sticks and Dem Bones candy.  Plus, of course, they all went home with at least one dino prize, their dino eggs from the egg hunt, their create-a-saurus, and their pinata prizes.  Good bit of loot! 

My son and his friends really had a blast.  As always, thanks to all those who have had dino parties who posted their ideas on here.  I don't do a BD party w/o looking through this site for ideas!