dinos

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : October : 18

dinos
By maryellen

I have dinosaur shaped books with colorful covers made with the Roylco dinosaur skin patterend paper from a teachers store. I stick on googly eyes. The children plan and write a dino adventure.

We study 4 dinos in detail;
TRex, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Apatosaurus. For contrast we introduce Pteranodon -it was not a dino but a flying reptile. There are lots of great fact and fiction books available on each of these.
The children go into the library in groups of 4/5(one group a day) to research facts about a dinosaur of their choosing, with the help of the librarian and a parent volunteer. They

fill in the answers to questions about the size, what they eat, how they looked, etc. Their report is then illustrated by photocopying a picture from one of the research texts. They really like that part.

We use the dino snacks for a measurement activity - they measure each item in dinos, then with a ruler, record both answers, then eat the snacks when they're done.

One activity that is really fun is to use dinosaur body parts run off on bright colors of copy paper; different heads, bodies, legs, decorate with horns, spikes, and ridges. Then we glue them onto a prepared background they can color (I got 5 choices from a dino coloring book) and they bring them to me. I use a dinosaur name guide (greek and roman syllables) to help them create a name their dino. Like this...."Your dinosaur is huge, "masso" means huge. It has a big head, "tops" means head. Can we call it Massotops? Makes a great display.

You can also color a page decorated as a museum, glue it around a milk carton, cut open the doors and let them display a dinosaur they created from playdough or plasticine. Shredded cellophane makes a good base. Also, there are lots of dinosaur fun songs to learn!