Dinosaurs
This month’s dinosaur themed activities are inspired by Jonny Marx’s book Age of the Dinosaurs. These dinosaur activities are designed to help you and your child discover more information about dinosaurs, get creative and use their imagination to create their own dinosaur small world.
These simple but fun activities are perfect to try with toddlers and older kids who love dinosaurs!
Jurassic Park
My two were very excited to try this activity, they wanted to create homes for their new dinosaur figures. The only additional item that was needed was a glass jar and some water, everything else is included in our Dinosaur Activity Box. We started by going outside and collecting some pebbles and gravel to add to the bottom of the jar. Next we mixed the compost with water. Then we added the compost and seeds to our jars. Both girls worked carefully to try and scoop the compost in without spilling too much. Once that was complete we added our dinosaur silhouette around the outside using the glue. Then it was a waiting game, but we didn’t have to wait long! In less than 48 hours we spotted roots growing down in our jar. It was great to be able to see this having grown the seeds in a glass jar. Before long we had lovely lush grass for our dinosaurs to roam around in!
Fossils
Using the salt dough ingredients from our Dinosaur Activity box we just need to gather some natural bits including shells and leaves to create some interesting impressions in our salt dough. We mixed the salt dough ingredients with a little water. It is important to add just a little at a time. Ideally you want quite a dry dough as if it is too sticky it become very difficult to remove the item you want to make an impression with. Once we had the dough right the girls did the rest themselves. Rolling and flattening chunks of dough, which is perfect for developing finger strength. We used the small dinosaur figures from the dinosaur activity box and shells too. Both of mine also wanted to try and create a dinosaur bone shaped piece of dough! Then it was time to bake them in the oven!
Dinosaur Small World
Small world play is always a hit with our children and as they are huge dinosaur fans this activity was a sure fire hit! For this activity I added some pebbles and greenery from the garden to the playdough, book and dinosaur figure from our dinosaur activity box and it was ready to go. The girls then got creative and designed their small worlds. Once made they started playing with, hiding their dinosaurs, stomping through the squishy playdough and going on mini adventures scaling the pebbles. They carried on playing with their small worlds for quite some time and this activity is brilliant at developing not only their imaginations but also their language.
Measuring and Comparing
The dinosaur book The Age of Dinosaurs included in this month's subscription box includes lots of interesting facts and measurements. These measurements can be a little hard to visualise and to fully understand the scale of dinosaurs. So using the measuring tape we explored a few of these measurements. With F I used just the measure of 1m on the measuring tape and we then started to compare that 1m to things in our home including ourselves. We focussed on the language of bigger than and smaller than, biggest and smallest. I set M the challenge of using the tape to measure different parts of her and her sister’s body. This activity definitely helped them to understand the scale of the dinosaurs more.
Fossil hunt
As the girls were so proud of their dinosaur fossils I wanted to use them for an activity and of course a fossil hunt is just perfect. For the soil/sand I used some old wheat biscuits that I blitzed in the food processor. Sand, cous cous or other dried cereals could all work too. this was then poured onto their fossils, I added some paintbrushes to be used as tools and that was it. This dinosaur activity was such a hit that once they had discovered all the fossils they then took turns hiding them for the other to find.
Cutlery Skills
Learning to use cutlery, especially a knife is a tricky skill to master. Practising this skill with squishy playdough is a fun way to do it. I simply took some of their toy crockery added their real cutlery and the tin of play dough from our Dinosaur activity kit and that was it. Initially they simply focussed on cutting their playdough but this play quickly evolved into a restaurant where they used their cutlery to create different items from their imaginary menu! It was a really relaxed way to be able to show them how to use their cutlery.
Loose parts - reusing resourcing from previous boxes
I absolutely love reusing resources from previous boxes. This activity uses the green playdough and dinosaur box, the brown cinnamon playdough ad green felt leaves from the Leap Frog box, the pebbles and shells from Clem and Crab, the flower crayons from the Seeds and Flowers box, the glass pebbles from the Colour Monster and the paper leaves from Leaf. Then it is up to my little boy to decide what he is going to build! Where will his imagination take him?
d is for dinosaur
This is a super simple phonics activity that would work for any letter sound. We focused on d for this because of the link with the dinosaur book. I wrote the letter d on some cardboard and my son had to use the playdough to create the letter. Using our dinosaur we then stomped over the shape of the letter whilst saying the letter sound.
