Tag: Dinosaurs

Stomp with Dino Feet

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What’s more fun for a preschool tot than stomping around the house? Stomping around with dinosaur feet of course! Get out some sillies with this cute idea from High Five magazine.

To start, adults will need to trace a dinosaur foot shape on a large piece of craft foam. I really have no idea what a dinosaur footprint looks like, but a three-toed creature seemed to fit the bill!

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Cut an X into the foam with scissors near the ankle of each foot – this is how your child will wear the dino feet.

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Travis loves practicing with kid-safe scissors, so although cutting the dino foot was beyond his skill, he helped me snip out a few triangles that we would need later on. “Dinosaurs need lots of triangles!” he told me very seriously.

First though, we had to paint our dino feet! Travis smeared on some pink, and I added a few orange dots for contrast.

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Let the paint dry, then add the final adornment with the smaller pieces of foam you cut out.

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And now it’s time to stomp!

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Salt Dough Dinosaur Fossils

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Ok, this is our last dinosaur project for a while, I promise! But I’ve become a big fan of salt dough lately, and Travis never tires of mixing flour and water, so we gave this project a quick go!

In a bowl or basin, have your child combine the following:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup water

Mix with your hands, and add more flour if it seems too sticky. Show your child how to knead the dough – a neat little lesson if you ever intend to bake bread with them later on!

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Then it was time to roll our dough out. We rolled ours a bit too thin – aim for 1/2-inch thick for the best dinosaur imprints.

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Cut circles from the dough with a cookie cutter, and then press toy plastic dinosaurs into the dough to leave an imprint. Travis loved using the cookie cutter to make circles within circles, while I set aside our finished “fossil” imprints.

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We let our fossils air-dry this time around, although you can speed up the process in the oven.

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Now your budding archaeologist can dig up dino fossils any time he or she likes!

Dinosaur Crate

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With the arrival of our latest Koala Crate, I’m struck yet again by the ways in which Travis’s brain has changed since we started this subscription. He was so eager to get started on the first project in our box that I had to let him dive in before I’d even seen the theme and instructions!

Luckily, I could catch up quickly as he peeled off the stickers for the first craft – Dinosaur Dress-Up! Apply the felt stickers to the provided visor and dino feet to make your fearsome T-rex.

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You can talk about shapes (triangles, circles) as your child works, as well as what elements of the dinosaur they represent, like teeth, spots, or claws.

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Travis had the eyes stuck on the visor in the right spot before I even had a chance to ask him where he thought they should go!

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Rar!

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No sooner had he paraded around in the costume for a bit than he wanted to see what was next, so I pulled out the materials for Clay Fossils. This craft required first matching up puffy bone stickers to a template, great practice for getting stickers precisely in the right spot.

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He was so proud of his work, and then thrilled when I showed him the imprint of a dinosaur skeleton that was left behind when we pressed the provided air-dry clay on top.

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We had fun talking about what fossils are and the clues they leave behind, i.e. a dinosaur with short arm bones likely walked on only two feet, versus one whose arms and legs were the same length.

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And then like a whirlwind he was already moving on to project three, the Dino Match Game, with two provided game boards, a spinner, and pop-out tokens to match up with the proper dinosaur footprint.

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Travis loved playing several rounds in a row.

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He wanted to know the names of all the dinosaurs on the card, so luckily our included Imagine magazine had a helpful name and pronunciation guide. This mama had never heard of the Spinosaurus before!

We continued the fun with at-home crafts like Dino Eggs, and pulled out some of our favorite Usborne dino books like The Big Book of Big Dinosaurs, Lift the Flap Dinosaurs, I’m a Dirty Dinosaur, and Dinosaur Activity Book.

As always, you can replicate much of this crate with materials from your local craft store, though you’ll need to pull out your artistic skills to draw those game boards!

Dinosaur Dig Sensory Bin

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We’ve been on a dinosaur kick this past week, which led to this new variation on the sensory bin!

To set up our archaeological dig, I used three kinds of dried beans as the base – pinto beans, black-eyed peas, and white beans. Hide various dinosaur toys or bones in the bottom of a bin, then cover with the beans.

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Next, Travis and I gathered our tools – we needed shovels, rakes, and wooden craft sticks to sift through the layers of “soil”. He was so excited when he unearthed the T-Rex skull!

 

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We also used test tubes to collect “soil samples” of the beans. Pouring the beans into the narrow tubes took great concentration, and was a nice test for fine motor skills.

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Overall, Travis liked scooping the beans more than he was into the archaeological aspect of the bin, but it was still a great way to extend our play with dinosaur toys at home.

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Dino Eggs

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There are baby dinosaurs hatching in our kitchen! Okay, maybe not really, but this make-it-yourself clay egg recipe was as real as it gets for a toddler.

Half the fun was in gathering the materials, because first we needed dirt! Travis loved helping to shovel in the ground until we’d collected 1 cup.

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At home, we mixed the dirt together with the following:

1 cup flour

1 cup sand

1/2 cup salt

2/3 cup water

Travis loved mixing the ingredients, and especially watching the way the dirt changed color once the flour and salt had been added.

Be careful as you add the water so that you don’t mix in too much – you want the mixture to stick together but not be mushy. I was the one getting my hands dirty for this part, while Travis still stirred with a spoon, but he loved watching!

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Place small toy dinosaurs over a portion of the mixture and cover with more until the dinos are hidden, shaping them roughly into an egg.

If you live some place warm and sunny, dry the eggs outside for 4 or 5 days! We sped things up by baking at 175 degrees F for 4 hours. Travis loved peeking in the oven, where I told him the baby dinos were incubating!

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In the morning, it was time to help our dinos hatch, with a little help from a friend! The outside of the “eggs” was quite hard, so it helped for adults to poke a hole with a chisel first to get the process going.

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From there, the boys were able to use wooden craft sticks to get deeper inside the eggs.

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The clay had stayed softer on the inside, so in the final stage, they could release the baby dinosaurs by hand. What a find!

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After a final rinse in clean water, the baby dinos were ready to play.

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This activity is a must for any dinosaur lover!

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Dinosaur Egg

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We found dinosaur eggs in our apartment this weekend! Okay, maybe not really, but these giant balloon-sized eggs are sure to get your kiddos excited, even if they helped make them and remember that they started out as balloons!

To start, slightly inflate a balloon (large ones work best for this game) and insert a small toy dinosaur into each – be careful not to tear the plastic of the balloon with any spikes i.e. t-rex works better than stegosaurus here, folks. Inflate the balloon the rest of the way.

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At this point, I told Travis we had baby dinosaurs that would be hatching soon, but that we needed to help the eggs incubate. It was time to get to work with our papier-mache!

If you’ve never made papier-mache at home, don’t be intimidated; it’s just one part flour to one part water. We mixed together our goop in a baking pan, which I set out along with a stack of torn newspaper.

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Travis had way more fun simply throwing the newspaper into the goop…

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…and stirring it with a spoon…

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…but I managed to cover our balloons in the meantime. Set them aside overnight to dry.

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Now came the magic. The next morning, I popped the balloons inside with a sharp pin. This cracked the papier-mache coating perfectly, so the eggs looked like the babies were just starting to hatch.

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Travis had so much fun opening the eggs the rest of the way to reveal the dinos inside!

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Note: If you like, you can paint your eggs before “hatching” them, but Travis was too excited to rip them apart, so we skipped that step!

 

Ice Excavation

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This morning we had some fun with a little dinosaur skull we recently purchased. Ahead of time, I put the skull into a dixie cup and filled the cup with water, then left it in the freezer overnight. I did the same with a rock to be a “fossil” and a little plastic lizard, for lack of any other dinosaur “bones”!

In the morning, I asked Travis if he wanted to be a paleontologist and excavate dinosaurs from the ice. How, I asked him, would we get them out?

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He loved the puzzle behind this game more than I thought, asking me which tools we could use. I gave him cups of warm water, a spoon, an eye dropper, and a little (child-safe) chisel.

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I was so proud of how patient he was with our “excavation! I thought he might just pour the warm water onto the ice, but he loved spooning it carefully, and watching the toys be freed little by little.

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The best was when our T-rex was nearly out, but a final chunk of ice remained in its jaws – Travis loved reaching in to pull it out.

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A cute game for the imagination and for a tiny intro to archaeology.

Cornmeal Play

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Making finger sketches for F week inspired me to pull out the cornmeal later in the week for good old messy fun.

My original idea was to set up a dinosaur stomping ground, adding a layer of cornmeal and Travis’s collection of small plastic dinosaurs to a baking tray. I thought he’d enjoy making dinosaur footprints, and the fact that the cornmeal looked like Jurassic desert sand. Surprisingly, he was uninterested… until I added a small cone of paper to be a volcano.

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This piqued his interest, but he soon discovered that it was much more fun to sprinkle the cornmeal outside the baking tray than to stomp the dinosaurs inside it – a reminder that toddlers will make of games whatever they choose! He loved “sweeping” the cornmeal, and was happy doing so for quite some time.

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Finally the dinosaurs entered back into the game, with Travis burying them in a separate container under a layer of cornmeal.

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He started using the “volcano” as a funnel/scoop to bury them, which I thought was quite inventive on his part!

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The game turned out to be such a hit, even if not in the way I intended, that he asked to play again later in the afternoon.

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