Dinosaur Themed Play Date

This post was part of Oopsey Daisy's Summer Camp series.  I had so much fun putting together our dinosaur themed play date!

My daughter loves to read books.  Most times when she is nowhere to be found I can usually discover her sitting in her room surrounded by piles of books as she flips through the pages.  Sometimes I spy on her reading stories to her dolls.  Regardless of the book she is reading I typically hear the same story - "Once upon a time there was a princess.  The end."  In addition to being girly and obsessed with princesses, my daughter is really into dinosaurs!  We absolutely adore Jane Yolen's dinosaur books and were really excited to share a fun story and play date with my daughter's favorite over the summer. 

This book is about naughty dinosaurs that know just the right way to express love to their mommies and daddies.  We invited a few friends over to share our book and have some fun.

I used cute dinosaur printables from Smitten Blog Designs to add the dino decor to our play date.

Free printable party pack found here

The printable party pack did not include a non specific banner so I used the images to create my own.

We had a lot of fun dinosaur related food!  To create the food labels I printed directly onto address labels and then stuck them on folded cardstock.  I used the cupcake toppers from the party pack to make them cuter.

Our play date was before lunch so I tried to avoid sugary snacks for the kids. 

Lava Juice - fruit punch
Dinosaur Fruit Snacks - gummies in PERFECT dinosaur packaging purchased from my local grocery store
Miniature Dinosaur Eggs - grapes
Dinosaur Bones - pretzels
Swamp Dip -  avocado and cottage cheese dip with tortilla chips

Our friends at the play date ranged in age from six months to five years old.  I thought a coloring craft would easily take care of the age gap.  I purchased small wooden dinosaurs from Michaels and decided to use crayons instead of paint or markers to avoid the mess.  Since our book was about expressing love, I put out heart stickers to embellish the dinosaurs.  Glue sticks were popular at the crafting table but I'm not sure I saw any googly eyes actually glued to the dinosaurs!

I gave each guest a dinosaur notebook as a thank you for coming to our play date.  I made the notebooks using generic brand books (only 15 cents each!), animal print paper, address labels, and the cupcake toppers from the printable party pack.  The texture of the paper made these really fun!

I'm sure we will see more dinosaur themed parties in our future.  I love that my girly girl likes more than just pink and sparkly things!