Dino Diggers

Is there any match as perfect as toddlers and dinosaurs? They go together like peanut butter and jelly! This would explain the huge sign-up I had for last week's Dino Digger's program, for ages 2-5.

We started off the program with a story-- just one. It was hard to choose which I wanted to read. Because I was only doing one, I kind of wanted a true story book, but I wanted it to be short and easy enough so that even the youngest kids in the group would get something out of it. There are a lot of great dinosaur books, but I wound up picking Roar by Todd H. Doodler, which I'd used (with success) for pre-school visits some years ago. I think everyone enjoyed it, although I'm not sure if they enjoyed it more than they would have enjoyed, say, Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, The Super Hungry Dinosaur, or Dini Dinosaur. There are a few good class-roaring opportunities throughout Roar, so it's got that really big perk going for it. (Nevermind the fact that I had a sweet boy afraid of loud noises. Details, details.)

After the book, I opened the room up for a sort of "free play." I had several different activities available and about 30-minutes for children and caregivers to make their way around the room to try it all out.

There were:

-- Two sand bins with sifters and dinosaur skeletons buried for the kids to dig around in *

-- Several dinosaur puzzles

-- A volcano picture made by blowing watered down paint through a straw **

-- A trace-a-dino-footprint worksheet ***

-- Dino eggs to inspect and match up with their corresponding pictures ****

* The sand bins and the dinosaur skeletons are things we own and have on hand. We don't use them very often but when we do, they are always, always, always a big hit. It was time to break them out again and, as usual, they were awesome.

** I got the idea for this craft from Pinterest-- specifically, it came from OurLittleAcorns.com. I had pre-cut volcanoes (although my coworker commented that they looked like poops), watered down red and orange paint with straws for blowing, and these puffy dinosaur stickers, which were cool, though smaller than I'd anticipated. This craft was fun, but way too hard for the younger crew. In fact, I tried it at home with Sadie (who's 2½) and she liked doing it in theory, but was kind of clueless and not really strong enough, physically, to blow the paint around through the straw. The stickers though, now those were easy and fun for her. On the other hand, the 4ish-year-olds in the class had great success with blowing the paint!

*** The trace a dino footprint worksheets can be found here, on PagingSuperMom.com. I printed a stack and a few kids did them. I also took one home for Sadie and she liked it!

**** The dino eggs were fun! I borrowed these from our county's lending library. They are a total mystery to me. I seriously have no idea how they were made but they're really cool looking! Basically, they're colorful plastic dinosaurs living inside Easter egg-sized, clear plastic homes, with a texture similar to that of a fancy, un-started bar of soap. To go with them, I made some match-up sheets to encourage the kids to examine the eggs and play with them a little. I think it worked pretty well.

This is a picture I took of the eggs and sheets a long time ago. I have since lost my original sheets and the eggs got a little cloudier. But this really gets the idea across:

Some "egg-xamining" in action below. The boy pictured was so smart! Instead of matching the eggs with the pictures, he wrote down the name of every type of dinosaur! I told him that was the "advanced way" to do this activity.

What worked least: As a whole, this was a great program (that I received a lot of great feedback about!) but it's true that the paint blowing craft was probably better for the 4+-ers of the group and not the younger kids. Even despite this, the younger ones watched their parents/caregivers blow the paint and still enjoyed the sticker scene aspect of the craft, so I'm not sure I'd have even changed anything in retrospect!

What worked best: The sand. It's always all about the sand.