Joachim has been talking about a dinosaur birthday party since last year and to be honest I wasn't looking forward to planning this one, but it came together well, even better than the pirate party I think.My first inspiration was born out of my frustration with our boring dirt backyard. I envied the tree houses and playhouses of my friends and then sitting around the kitchen table chatting I realized I already had the resources for a fort of sorts and so the dinosaur cave was born. I used the fence sections (left by the previous owners) from the pirate ship "deck" to build the above cave. My first feat was dragging them across the yard, my second was screwing them together while Joachim held them up, and for the roof and reinforcement I enlisted Ben's height. After some debate as to the potential sturdiness of the structure I think it came out quite solid. I cut a whole in the back and made a tunnel with the old interior doors from our house (yes, we still have quite a bit of scraps and junk hiding around our yard).
I took advantage of another resource we have in abundance -dirt- and made a dig pit burying dozens of easter eggs with treasures inside, scattering sea shells and providing shovels. I worried about having plastic eggs left in my backyard, but I completely underestimated the thoroughness of kids digging up treasure, I could have easily tripled the size of the pit and they still would have cleaned it out, in fact, I should have just done it in our garden and then we wouldn't need to rototill this spring.
For dino dress up I started with an idea I had for dollar store ball caps hot gluing foam teeth onto them. Last year they had good quality hats which is where Joachim's green one came from, this year they only had blue and black left and all the rest were a horribly cheap plastic polyester that didn't fit right... too bad. I also made sets of foam claws that were cool to wear but less practical for activity, you can sort of see Aidan with them below.
The best part was definitely the tails. I found this tutorial online when I was poking around for ideas. I didn't set out to make one for each child until I made the first one and it was so easy. I found a few shortcuts along the way, like I made the spikes out of felt rather than sewing two pieces of fabric together and turning them inside out, and I used ribbon for the straps rather than sewing more pieces of fabric and finally I used my friend, the hot glue gun, to attach the Velcro and put Velcro on the opening so you can stuff an unstuff it for better storing.In fact, I enlisted friends to help stuff as they were arriving with their kids because I was still hot glue gunning. In the tutorial she stuffs them with polyfill but I stuffed them with plastic grocery bags... my mom was a trooper and collected bags of bags from the grocery store recycling box because I didn't have enough for all the tails. I only had to buy the ribbon because I had enough fabric on hand for all of the tails, a sad commentary on the currently overflowing state of my crafting nook.
There was one basic activity involving several mini-games. Joachim and I assembled an obstacle course crossing the "lava" flow to safely arrive at the cave. The night before I tied numbered tags with clues on them to little dinosaurs that I placed in balloons. The kids had to cross the lava flow "hatch" an "egg" and bring the baby dino and tag back.
When all the tags were retrieved they lined them up in order to read where the dinosaur nest was with the pinata egg. My original idea was to have two teams competing to find two dinosaur nests, but Joachim, not being the competitive sort, didn't want to race, so in the end it was a team effort which worked out fine, but a line of 9 kids took a bit longer than two lines of five would have.
Above Katia is using the lava walkers as an alternative to doing the course, only the two girls used them, I think as an expression of solidarity.
And they're off to find the nest behind the shed. We acquired this shed in the fall and as with many free things it still needs a little TLC, a project for this spring.
Somewhere in my browsing the internet I found someone had rented a fog machine to fill the party with a prehistoric mist. Intriguing, but a little over the top. I also came across a mom who baked a cake in a mixing bowl to make a volcano. So, remembering a "witches" brew my 3rd grade teacher made, I wondered if I could combine dry ice with the volcano cake idea. It wasn't the fancy cake I'd been envisioning with a river, ferns and lots of little dinosaurs milling around, but considering Joachim and I hollowed it out and decorated it literally 40 minutes before the party, it turned out just fine.
Thank you Kassia for knowing exactly how to help.
