Dinosaur Party (Elementary)

Well, let me say I am one tired dinosaur!  Earlier this week we did our first dinosaur party!  ROAR!!!!!!!!  Our crowd really surprised us, but in a very good way.  We had a total of 229 people!!! 139 kids and 90 adults.  This has set a record for us with our elementary age party.  What really made it work out so well was we had things set up outside, otherwise we couldn't have allowed everyone into our auditorium at the same time.  My boss has graciously allowed my creative mind to go wild, in that I'm allowed to plan and present things like this every couple of months.  What will be happening in August?  Stay tuned!


1.) Triceratops Craft
Credit: Arty Crafty Kids
The original craft for this was a paper plate, but we had so many of these to make, we made our craft out of construction paper.  In the middle of this picture we taped down a sample for everyone to see, and this worked out wonderfully!  My favorite part of this craft is that the mouth opens up and you can see all the teeth!

2.) Dinosaur Headband Craft
Credit: (No link for this, just a picture on pinterest.  If this is your idea, please leave a comment!)
This turned out to be so popular with all of the kids!  The best part was watching them all run around with their headbands on!  The cutest thing was, I had one of my storytime kids show up the next day wearing his headband, so precious!


3.) Torn Paper Volcano
Credit: Preschool Crafts for Kids 
I was really excited about this craft, because usually any torn paper craft the kids go crazy over.  For whatever reason, this was the only craft that we had any left of.  Granted, it wasn't a lot that we had left, but all of our others crafts we didn't have hardly anything left.


4.) T-Rex Craft
Credit: Teachers Pay Teachers
There is a wonderful dinosaur bundle you can get through the link above.  We only needed one dinosaur craft, so we made the one below.  We had some very creative and terrific dinosaurs made!

5.) Dino Decorations
Sadly, time just got away from me, with trying to get decorations ready for SRP.   That's honestly not a good excuse at all.  I really had all these giant decorations in mind for this party, but there is always next time!  I did get some things done, and I've included them below.  I have to give kudos to one special volunteer, my mom.  She made every craft you see above, helped cut and put up all the decorations, and stayed all day, from early morning to that evening.  She helped set up, work the whole party, then cleaned up that evening.  She will never see this blog, or I highly doubt it, but she does every craft for our weekly storytime, every party, she's an amazing woman and I love her very much!

This is our tabletop decorations, isn't it cute!  It's a paper towel roll, with paper leaves, river rocks at the bottom, and shredded paper confetti.

Below is a picture of dino footsteps leading into our auditorium.  I hope the kids liked these, I was too wild running around to see their reactions!

We had games setup outside, which was amazing!  I ordered these dino balloons off ebay, so I wanted to draw attention to our dino footsteps.  Unfortunately the wind blew many of the footsteps away, as you can tell if you look closely in the picture!  But I am so thankful that the Lord blessed us with a glorious day, it was picture perfect!


I have to be silly, don't you know me by now?   I posed in our dino headband, in front of our "dig site" door.  This caution tape is amazing, and I still have a whole roll left!  

6.) Dinosaur Bones Matching
Credit: Catch My Party
I had hoped the kids would have enjoyed this more than they did, but I wasn't outside with it, so hopefully they did.  I ordered a dinosaur skeleton sand molds off ebay, and used stepping stones dry concrete mix to pour into the molds.  Word of advice, spray lots and lots of pam into your molds and grease every nook and cranny of them.  That way each piece of the skeleton will pop right out!  I made two sets and a partial of my third set.  I think next time I do this party, I will just hide the skeleton set inside our sand pit, which is the next game I've included below.

7.) Dinosaur Egg Excavation
I would have loved to do the cool science experiments where we make our dinosaur eggs fizz or explode, but with our crowd we were expecting, it just wasn't feasible.  So, I took jumbo easter eggs and put plastic dinos inside them.  Next, we buried them in sand!  The only thing was I needed more dinos and couldn't find them at the last minute.  Everyone seemed to go crazy over this, so I'm already racking my brain for what I can do next time!

8.) Tricera-Toss
Credit: (There is no link, just a picture on pinterest.  If this is your fabulous idea, please let me know! That way I can give you credit.)
This game was such a big hit!  Our game is weighted down by river rocks, because the wind was blowing.  I laid out rubber rings that you can use in the pool to toss around, and they worked perfectly!  The only thing was our horns kept getting torn off, but otherwise this was perfect!

9.) Dinosaur Bingo
Credit: Artsy Fartsy Mama
I think the kids would have played bingo non-stop, which they almost did!  This is the most amazing set of dinosaur bingo I've ever seen, be sure to check it out!

10.) Dinosaur Eggs

11.) Dino Bones

Credit: (No link, just picture. If this is your idea, leave a comment please!)

12.) Dino Sours

Credit: (Link no longer found, I apologize.)

13.) Dino Scales

Credit: Love Always, Mommy

I end my dinosaur post by a picture of myself as a cavewoman.  Looking back, I always have bittersweet feelings about the parties.  Yes, I stress way too much, but knowing everyone enjoyed them, that's what matters.  Hopefully we show them that a library is a place of happiness and that they will come back to us for literacy, learning and so much more.