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DINOSAURS

MAKE-BELIEVE DINOSAUR PICTURES
Give your children extra-large pieces of paper. Invite them to use crayons, markers, and paints to create giant pictures of make-believe dinosaurs. Ask them to think about how their dinosaurs would be different from known ones. Are they colored orange and purple? Do they have curly tails? Are their ears long and floppy? When the children have finished, give them tiny magazine pictures of such items as trees, houses, and cars to glue at the bottom of their pictures to make their dinos look gigantic.
 
MAKING FOSSILS
Use a favorite recipe to make clay that will harden when dry. Give your children balls of the clay to flatten into rounds. Show them how to press small shells or leaves into the clay to create clear impressions. Then have them carefully remove the objects and allow the clay to air dry. When the clay hardens, display their “fossils” on your science table.
 
DINO MATCHING

  • Set out several picture books about dinosaurs for your children to look at. Using one of the books, point to one of the dinosaur pictures. Then ask the children to see if they can find pictures of the same dinosaur in any of the other books. Continue with pictures of different dinos.
  • Add a set of plastic dinosaurs to the dinosaur books you have set out. Can the children match the plastic dinos to pictures in the books?

     
DINO STORY
Place small plastic dinosaurs in a bag. Remove one of the dinos and start a make-believe story in a way such as this: “It was sunrise, time for T-Rex’s breakfast. ‘Grrrr, I’m hungry!’ he roared.” Then pass the bag of dinosaurs around your group. As you do so, let each child in turn take a dino from the bag and incorporate it into the story you started. Continue until all the dinos have been included.
 
DINO HUNTS

Try one or more of these games with your group.
Hide paper “dinosaur bones” around the room for your children to find.
Place small toy dinosaurs in plastic eggs. Mark each egg with a different sticker and attach a matching sticker to each child’s hand. Hide the eggs and have the children find the ones that are theirs by matching the stickers.
Draw a giant dinosaur on a piece of posterboard. Cut out the shape and then cut it into pieces: legs, feet, head, neck, torso, and tail. Invite the children to search for the pieces and put them together to form a whole dino.
DINOSAURS ARE IN THEIR EGGS
Tune: “Mary Had a Little Lamb”

Dinosaurs are in their eggs, (Curl up on floor in pretend shells.)
In their eggs, in their eggs.
Dinosaurs are in their eggs,
Waiting to break out.

Dinosaurs are hatching now, (Break out of pretend shells.)
Hatching now, hatching now.
Dinosaurs are hatching now.
See them move about. (Crawl and hop around.)
Liz Ryerson
 
THE DINOSAURS ARE MARCHING ROUND

Tune: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”

The dinosaurs are marching round,
Hooray, hooray.
The dinosaurs are marching round
Today, today.
They clomp and clomp across the floor,
They open their mouths and give a loud roar,
Then they all go marching
Round and round once more.
Elizabeth Scofield

Let the children act out the song as you sing.
 

DINOSAUR SNACKS

  • Cut dino shapes out of bread slices with cookie cutters and spread on peanut butter or soft cream cheese. Let your children decorate their shapes with raisins and dry cereal pieces.
  • Make blue or green finger gelatin. Use cookie cutters to cut out dino shapes for snacking.