Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures! How could something so huge, so enormous roam the Earth unimpeded for so long and then suddenly disappear to be discovered only recently?
Books
We picked up many dinosaur books from the library, but this one I bought.
Dinosaurs!
by Michael & Caroline Carroll
Dinosaurs! talks about how dinosaurs fit into the old-earth view of creation. It answers questions about how dinosaurs lived, how we find out about them, and how they fit into God’s creation.
Being A Paleontologist
We found this neat little paleontology kit at Hobby Lobby. It simulates digging up dinosaur bones and the patience a paleontologist must have in order to excavate it without damaging the bones.
You get a hard block of plaster and a couple tools.
Doing it the slow way would take several days to fully uncover the dinosaur. With it wet, it only took about 30 minutes to an hour. This kit is designed for 8+, so the quicker way was much more agreeable for my 5 year old.
After all the pieces were out, J quickly assembled it
and discovered a T-Rex!
Hatching Dinosaur Eggs
Obviously we can’t go back in time to watch dinosaurs hatch, but we can do the next best thing and make and hatch them ourselves.
We had a bunch of Toob Dinosaurs, so I pushed them into some balloons and blew them up.
We whipped up a batch of paper mache (2 parts water to 1 part flour), cut up some magazine paper and went to work covering the balloons.
They take about a day to dry.
Once dry, we painted the paper mache and popped the balloons inside. Then put them in a “nest”.
The kids got to hatch the eggs and discover the dinosaurs lurking inside!
Dinosaur Tracks
I knew the roll of brown paper would come in handy someday! I covered the floor with it and set two paper plates on one end with brown/black paint.
The kids pretended they were dinosaurs and made tracks all up and down it! Thank goodness for washable Crayola paints too because sometimes little feet wandered.
They made tracks with the dinosaurs too!
Rrraaaaaarrrrrrrrr!!
Playing Games
Dinosaur Math Tracks is a neat game in that it teaches place value and reading larger numbers. Very fun and highly recommended! Even my 3 year old gets into it.
We picked up a Professor Noggin card game about Dinosaurs at the Bookies store in Denver and decided to try it out. It was actually a lot easier than a thought. Not a roar of excitement, but ok. We took the cards from it though to do the next activity.
Measuring Dinosaurs
Reading facts in a book really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to little kids.
So we looked up a few dinosaurs and wrote down their height.
Then we grabbed some sidewalk chalk, went out to the driveway and measured out just how incredibly enormous these guys really were. The one on the right, Velociraptor, was only 3 feet tall. While T-Rex was a gigantic 40 feet tall! Wow!
Glue Fossil
Learning about fossils, the kids drew a T-Rex and then drew over it again with glue.
Once dry, they painted over it with watercolors which made the fossil really stand out.
Dinosaur Ridge
See our trip to Dinosaur Ridge!
See our other Science Series units:
Making Rainbows
Caterpillars to Butterflies
Dinosaurs
Looking Inside The Earth with Playdoh
Nature Walks
Animal Classification
Tsunamis
