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You don’t have any dinosaur-obsessed kids in your house, do you? I definitely do! He’s 6′ 1″ and Lady calls him Dad. 🙂
Because I married into a family where the favorite movie is Jurassic Park, dinosaur everything was a no-brainer. One of our first gifts as a married couple to my niece was a Jurassic Park themed racetrack complete with dinos and the jeeps! Needless to say, we spend lots of time with dinosaur crafts, games, movies, etc.
Today is the first of our dino books and activities, but I promise there will be more, so stay tuned!
We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins
The first book in the Penelope Rex series follows Penelope as she is excited for her first day at school only to find that all of her classmates are…children! Penelope knows that children are just delicious but soon finds out that they don’t appreciate being eaten.
This was an enjoyable read for many different aged kids and was a fun take on the “Golden Rule.” I also like the look of the characters in this book, a little bit like comic characters. Penelope reminds me of the clothespin dinosaur puppets we did on another day. Here’s the link to the printable by Easy Peasy Fun! Thank you for sharing your talents with us!
Dino Block by Christopher Franceschelli
This was the first book I could get Lady to sit through the whole thing which is impressive considering how long it is. Each page is a simple sentence describing how a certain dinosaur is like a modern animal. The page then pops out to show which dinosaur it was describing. The book also has the pronunciation of the dinosaur names (so helpful!) And ends with a large pop open page featuring the dinosaur in fossil form.
Homemade Dinosaur Dig Eggs
We’ve done the store boughten break-apart fossils with my niece a few times and always have a blast. When I got a huge bucket of plaster of paris for Christmas, I knew we had to attempt making our own break-apart fossils.
There didn’t seem to be a wrong way to do this, but these are the amounts that worked best for us. (If you want a harder fossil, use less sand. If you have younger kids, you may want it to be easier to chip apart so add more sand.)
Materials Needed: (Makes 5 Jumbo Easter Eggs)
• 1 Cup Plaster of Paris
• 2 Cups Play Sand
• 1 Cup Water
• A Mold (We used plastic jumbo Easter Eggs)
• Something to dig out (We use both polished rocks and toy dino fossils. )
• Golf Tees*
• Little Mallet*
1. Mix together sand & plaster of paris. Then add in the water. Once it’s all combined, fill up half of the mold with your mixture. (The mold needs somewhere for the evaporated water to escape, so if using easter eggs, add so air holes and don’t snap eggs closed.)
2. Press in your toy or rocks then finish filling up the mold. Let dry for at least 24 hours (time will vary depending on how big your mold is and the amount of air holes.)
3. Once your fossil dig has completely dried, use a golf tee and mallet/little hammer to chip away at the fossil. Continue chipping until you can remove your toy.
Let us know below how it goes! Dino books and activities are our favorites, so don’t hesitate to drop a comment if you have a favorite dinosaur book or activity that we should try!
