Theme Week: Let’s Talk About Dinosaurs!
It’s time for another super fun theme! And this week I’ll be covering a favorite for all of the boys I know:
Dinosaurs!
So many kids love dinosaurs, and there are plenty of activities that use the beasts to teach little ones. Games, books, puzzles, counting, crafts. Dinosaurs are everywhere! We actually did this theme this week, and I had a hard time choosing which activities to do. So here are the ideas I finally decided to use:
Letters
Of course we had to learn D for Dinosaur. And since we tend to do crafts for the letter of the week, that’s what we did. I found several ways to make a dinosaur – or many dinosaurs! – out of the letter D. There were also a few dino crafts that did not use the actual letter. One of these was to make the body out of half of a paper plate.
I took it a step further and turned the half-plate into a letter D by cutting out the center. The kiddo decided he wanted to do a green T-Rex. So while he colored the body portion, I cut out a head, tail, leg, and arm from construction paper. As you can see from the pictures, I am not the best at drawing animal body parts! We also added a googly eye to make it even more fun. Then we glued it all together, and we had a funky looking but recognizable green T-rex!
Numbers
Both boys I care for absolutely love dinosaurs. They have so many books, a canvas tote full of figurines, and can say just about every type of dinosaur discovered. The youngest also is obsessed with tracking animals. So I put the two together for his math lesson this week. I cut out several dino footprints and wrote numbers on them up to twelve since that’s where he’s at. Then I laid them across the floor in sequential order as if the dinosaur had walked through. I also left a small surprise on top of the last one just to give him a feeling of accomplishment.
He enjoyed it so much that he asked to do it again. So I placed them in a different path, this time with his favorite stuffed animal at the end. We ended up tracking the dinosaur all over the house because it kept hiding his toy. I even let him place the footprints for me to follow. It helps him recognize the numbers as well as the order all while playing one of his current favorite games!
Another math activity we did used the shape pattern blocks. I found plenty of dinosaur patterns with a simple internet search, but I decided to go with (these – aussiechildcarenetwork.com). Use whichever pattern you think your little one would enjoy, or if you can find one that matches the colors of the blocks you use.
The patterns I printed didn’t match the colors of our blocks, and for some reason the pictures printed slightly stretched out. But after his initial confusion, he eventually figured it out and had fun building another T-rex, a Stegosaurus, and a Triceratops! And, when he finished, he enjoyed scattering the blocks all over the table again as many four-year-old boys would.
Science
Finding a dinosaur-themed science experiment proved more difficult than I expected. A few websites had small figurines inside an egg made from different materials. There were several ideas for bone digging. But none of these sounded like something my kids would enjoy. So I kept thinking and eventually remembered that when people think of dinosaurs, they tend to think of volcanoes and lava. Who doesn’t like the erupting volcano experiment?
So that’s what we did. The three older kiddos had an extra day off from school, so they were able to help with this one. We started by creating a model volcano. I didn’t want to use paper mâché since we only had one day to do the entire experiment. So instead we scrunched up pieces of aluminum foil and built a mountain around an empty two-liter soda bottle. Then the kids painted the silver mountain with brown and green paints to make it look more like an actual volcano.
We let it dry for a few hours before we added the eruption. We, of course, used baking soda and vinegar with some red food coloring for the lava. Some recipes also add dish soap, but in my experience, the soap doesn’t change much. Also, if you don’t like the smell of vinegar, try it with baking soda and lemon juice!
I try to let the kids do as much of our experiments as they’re able to, so they were able to get a bit messy with this one. Thankfully, the weather let us do it outside! We’ve done smaller versions of this chemical reaction before. Using a two-liter bottle, however, proved to need A LOT of the ingredients. We ended up using an entire 16oz container of baking soda and half of a gallon of vinegar. But it worked!
Child Development
When making my weekly lesson plan, I make sure that I include at least one activity for literacy, math, science, and art. I also try to add in other skills that he will need when he starts school. Fine and gross motor skills are the top areas that young children need to build. Without those, they will struggle learning everything both in school and out.
One of the best ways I’ve found to encompass multiple skills with one activity is by doing puzzles. A puzzle makes the child practice fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, cognitive thinking, color and shape matching, etc. For our dinosaur theme, I bought a puzzle and sticker activity book combination all about the animals.
This specific puzzle has 150+ small pieces, but the kiddo was able to do it with my help. And it’s in the shape of a dinosaur! Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could look at the sticker activity book. Hopefully, we can do that in the future. If you’re worried that your child can’t do a 150-piece puzzle, there are plenty of other options. Again, dinosaurs are everywhere! Wooden puzzles, 4-piece, picture matching. Choose one to your little one’s ability.
Conclusion
Dinosaurs can be a fun way for children to learn. Even playing with the figurines that you can find everywhere teaches different skills and lessons. Enjoy these ideas with your little ones. And if you have other ideas that use the beloved beasts, share them in the comments below!
