Holding a birthday party for your child? Stuck for ideas on how to make it interesting and at the same time easy to organise? Want a fun, colourful theme that children will love? Well look no further. This article gives you information on how to organise a dinosaur themed party that is sure to be a great success.

Your dinosaur birthday invitation

Invitations are essential for communicating the key party information, for creating some anticipation and for establishing your party theme.

Unlock your and your child's creativity and produce some really vibrant birthday invitations. You can download dinosaur images from the internet, cut them out and stick them on the birthday invitation. Why not make some foam dinosaurs out of craft sponge to accompany the birthday invitation? Or you could deliver the birthday invitation with some chocolate dinosaur eggs. Another great idea is to deliver the invitation in person in a balloon so that when the balloon gets popped the message inside is a wonderful surprise! You'll need balloons with a wide neck so that you can fit the birthday invitation inside the balloon. Roll up the birthday invitation and ease it through the gap, then blow up the balloon and tie the neck. Then you are ready to deliver the birthday invitation.

Dress the house and the garden and yourself

Put lots of dinosaur pictures around the house and garden. Use lots of greens and browns to establish your key theme colours around the house. If you make the house look like a jungle you'll be spot on. You could make a nest of eggs out of balloons with a weight inside to ensure they do not blow away, or you could buy plastic eggs.

Use your imagination when it comes to dressing up, but perhaps a word of caution if you decide to dress as a dinosaur. A six foot human in dinosaur fancy dress roaring out of the front door can be a little intimidating for some children and may result early tears, so this is perhaps best avoided.

Your birthday party activities

The key thing to point out here is that you should not attempt to reinvent the wheel when it comes to activities. The old favourites are so popular because they work. They are easy to set up and you should keep your party firmly anchored around these proven winners. By all means come up with your own ideas, but mix them in with the old favourites.

Plan for more activities than you will need ? this will allow you some flexibility as you go along. Make sure you mix up the creative activities with the energetic ones, so that you can moderate energy levels. For example, after a relay race, you could try a painting activity.

Make a dinosaur cake, or ask your local cake shop to make one for you. You can get aluminum cake pans in a wide range of shapes and you should be able to find a dinosaur shaped pan or egg shaped pan by doing an internet search. Frost your dinosaur or egg cake with bright colours. Use your imagination to make the dinosaur interesting. For example, for a triceratops, you could make the bony back and tail plates out of orange slices.

?Pin the Tail on the Diplodocus? is a variation on ?Pin the Tail on the Donkey?. You can draw your diplodocus or get an image off the internet by searching Google for images.

?Hunt for the Dinosaur Eggs? is a variation on the basic treasure hunt game. Hide lots of chocolate dinosaur eggs around the garden and then have the children find them. You could also hide plastic dinosaurs to add variation. You can number the dinosaurs so that each is exchanged for a prize. You can give clues if you wish. Set the children to work in pairs, or as you wish.

?Dinosaur Musical Chairs? is another old favourite adapted to theme. Try to use music from a dinosaur film e.g. Jurassic Park.

You can then set up a calming activity, Paint a Dinosaur.

As your finale, just remember that you need to go out with a bang and leave your party goers with smiles on their faces when it comes to going home time. You could have Dinosaur Relay Race, followed by a prize draw (where everyone gets a prize). I have used this combination and it works well. Give each child a dinosaur balloon, and their dinosaur themed prize.