Birthday Party Games - Dinosaur Game

by Jen Chacos
(Nashua, NH)

I recently threw a birthday party for my daughter. She was turning seven and is obsessed with dinosaurs. I tried and tried to come up with fun activities to keep a bunch of kids busy for a few hours. We came up with the usual piñata, pin the tail on the dinosaur.

I finally came up with the greatest idea of all. I staged a dinosaur game fossil dig in my backyard. It was actually pretty easy and fun to do. I started with a baby swimming pool and 2 - 50 pound bags of sand. I went and ordered a wooden dinosaur bone puzzle with something around 50 pieces. I put the sand in the pool and buried the "bones" in the sand. Over the course of a few weeks I lightly misted the sand so it would harden. It looked really cool. It ended up looking all cracked and dry like a real desert.

I gave each of the kids a Popsicle stick and a small paint brush. They dug out every single one of those bones and loved every second of it. They didn't even want to stop for cake. In order to keep track of the pieces I took a piece of poster board and traced the shape of all the bones onto the poster. That way when they found a bone they could match it up to the picture and cross it off. This worked out great because it allowed us to know when all the bones had been found without counting them all a thousand times. The best part of it all is after the dig is done you have all the bones to build a 3d dinosaur. So if they find the bones too quickly the building of it will take another couple of hours.

My daughter loved this; we kept the type of dinosaur a secret. When the puzzle was done and she realized it was her favorite dinosaur (a stegosaurus, at the time!) she flipped out all over again. She had the best party because of the dinosaur game and all her friends are looking forward to next year’s party. I am already trying to think of something new!