Montessori Inspired Dinosaur Activity Trays for Preschoolers

This is a long overdue post because we’ve been doing a lot of outdoor activities lately.  Most kids are really fascinated with dinosaurs, especially my eldest who’s obsessed with these prehistoric animals.  So last Easter break, we revisited some of our dinosaur activities and introduced new ones to Vito.  Here’s a roundup of our dinosaur activities which both of the kids enjoyed during the break and I hope your kids will love this too.

DINOSAUR TEN FRAMES

Our ten frame activities are one of our favorite printables and activities.  Aside from counting, it paves way for my son’s imagination as we count the dinosaurs in the picture.  Because the number of dinosaurs increases per frame, it allows Vito to identify which dinosaur was added in the picture.  So we used the ten frames both for logic and counting activity.  Here, we used our Easter egg chocolates as counters.


To write and trace the numbers, we used our chalk pens.

DINOSAUR PRINTS

Playdough has always been a favorite of both kids and it has always been a part of our dinosaur themed activities.  You might want to check our previous activities on how we used homemade playdough to create fossils and animal prints:

• Fun Dinosaur Color Sorting with Homemade Playdough Recipe
• Homemade Dinosaur Fossils

Our recipe for homemade playdough can be found here.  But in this case, instead of using food coloring, we used coffee to make our playdough brown and textured.

D FOR DINOSAUR

During our dinosaur activities, we focused on the letter ‘d’ sound.  We practised writing this letter and read CVC words starting and ending with letter d.

DINOSAUR COLOR SORTING

We totally enjoyed this color sorting activity using the Grimm's Color Charts Rally Building Blocks Set.  We worked on a similar activity years ago using Learning Resources’ Dinosaur counters and homemade playdough.  Details about this can be read here.


I wanted to make it different this year so we used our collection of dinosaur figures from Safari Toobs.  Some can be easily sorted out, but other figures are quite hard to find a color match. It was challenging for Vito, but fun!

IDENTIFYING DINOSAURS

And of course, we need to name or identify dinosaurs.  For his age, I wouldn’t expect that he will memorize the names of the dinosaurs.  The purpose of this activity is more on familiarization of the external features of each of the dinosaurs that we have in these cards.  Our Playmobil dinosaur collection helped, as they were big, sturdy, and more detailed.  We are using our Dinosaur 3 Part Cards (and Fact Cards) in this activity.



If you are planning on getting the playmobil dinosaurs below is a list of links from Amazon:

• PLAYMOBIL 9231 Explorer Quad with T-Rex
• PLAYMOBIL Explorer and Triceratops with Baby
• PLAYMOBIL Dimetrodon Playset

The playmobil dinosaur toys are good but they are pricey. A good alternative for these figures are the ones from Schleich. Below is a list of Schleich dinosaurs from Amazon:

• Schleich Tyrannosaurus Rex
• Schleich North America Velociraptor
• Schleich Triceratops
• Schleich North America Stegosaurus
• Schleich North America Spinosaurus & T-Rex

Here, we talked about dinosaur with plates, spikes, or sails on their backs.  We also identified dinosaur with horns, dinosaurs that can fly, and dinosaurs who eat other dinosaurs.

EXCAVATING DINOSAUR BONES

The most popular activity for this unit is dinosaur bone excavation.  We just didn’t “dig” out the bones from the clay, Vito went through the entire process of excavating and preserving dinosaur bones to know what it’s like to be an archeaologist. More about this activity here.

DINOSAUR INFORMATION CARDS

The aim of this activity was to introduce Vito to the diet of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs either eat fish, meat, plants, or a combination of plants and meat. The dinosaur information cards were designed for older kids, but it helped me identify which dinosaurs are herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.

FOSSILS

Just a simple activity for exposing the child to fossils, and how they are formed.  We started by talking about “what is a fossil” and “what do they look like”.  I used these Safari Toob Fossils to demonstrate a few important facts about fossils, like they’re mostly old and buried in the ground.  That some fossils are imprints, some are cavities or remains of dead animals, etc.


Here, we are trying to bury and dig our fossils and even make prints of the figures in our kinetic sand.

DINOSAUR FLOOR PUZZLE

I featured this dinosaur floor puzzle in our Instagram account.  A beautiful puzzle to go along with our dinosaur themed activities as Vito really loves puzzles!  I love that it’s not cartoonish and that the dinosaurs featured in this puzzle also matches with our dinosaur cards, so it was easy for us to name and identify them once we completed the puzzle.

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