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 Excavation Activity

I have a spare dinosaur excavation kit which I kept for years, waiting for Vito to be old enough to work on it.  Well, that time finally arrived and I gave it to him so he’ll experience what it’s like to be an archaeologist, even for a day.  Here’s a pretend play of how scientists are able to put up dinosaur bones in the museums!

Play-based Dinosaur Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

We are exploring dinosaurs till mid of the month and we get to use our Playmobil dinosaur sets!

Montessori Inspired February Activities for Preschoolers

Vito is 39 months old.

Thank goodness January is almost over!  I really don’t like January, it’s that time of the year where we get to experience the worst weather condition.  Fortunately, we have fair weather this year, it’s actually warm!  But, I am so looking forward to spring now, and I can’t wait for all these gloomy days to be over.  And speaking of spring, this month, I’ll start adding “spring” activities into our homeschool activities.  We will be using traditional Montessori materials for most part and in some, we’ll have themed activities.  Hope you like what I prepared for Vito for this month.

Hands-on Learning on the Types of Fossils

One activity that Mavi and I did during our fossil study was to examine the different types of method of preservation of organisms.  We discovered that there are actually 5 major types of fossils and I’m sharing how Mavi worked on them.

Dinosaur Small World Play Tray

Here’s what a mother can  do to her dinosaur-obsessed kids. 

Montessori Inspired Dinosaur Clean-Up Activity

Vito is 30 months old.

It was so warm last Tuesday that I asked the boys to play outside and then wash their dinosaur toys. Oh boy, they were so happy to do so!

Inspiring Kids To Do Research

As you all know, we’re having Dinosaur-themed activities this week. This curriculum is basically for Vito but most of the time, Mavi wants to take part in it as well, especially when the topic is interesting to him.  And since Mavi loves dinosaurs, I gave him some tasks last Monday (holiday in Ireland).

Fun Dinosaur Color Sorting with Homemade Playdough Recipe

How cute is this? Vito is currently obsessed with colour sorting and playdough so I'm using this obsession to my advantage.  I made playdoughs of rainbow colors and used them in our color sorting activity with our Learning Resources Dinosaur Counters and they turned out so festive and Vito played with them non-stop!

Letter D: Dinosaur Unit Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

The boys are crazy about dinosaurs so this is what we had last week for our letter D sound of the week. I think this is the very first animal Vito recognized because he’s been seeing these dinosaur figures since he was born.

I made use of all Mavi’s dino toys and used it for Vito’s unit. The activities here are so simple and easy to prepare especially if you have dinosaur figures already.

Cleaning dinosaur toy.  This was the first activity I could ever think of. Knowing the boys like to play with water, surely they will like this. And they did!  They washed and brushed their dinosaurs together outside. Vito mostly played with the water but Mavi was seriously doing the work.  So even if Vito didn’t get to really “brush” the dinosaurs, it was a perfect way to expose him to such kind of activity.


Playdough Dino Prints.  I wanted Vito to improve his “pressing” skills so I got out our playdough so we can make impressions.
As you can see, he doesn’t really press the dinos in the dough.  He would just place them on it.  At times he would push them into the playdough using his pointer fingers, not much of the entire hand yet.

Letter D.  We started sounding the letter D around the house as we talked about dinosaurs. Aside from my foam letters, which I posted on the wall for Vito to see everyday, I also made him put dots on a letter D.   He had fun sticking the dots on the letter.  Vito is using more of his left hand these days. Hmmm… I think I might have a leftie!
               
Now Vito realized he can stick the dots to his face as well. And he had fun doing it!


Matching Dinosaurs.  Vito can identify objects now, so I was wondering if he can match objects as well. This activity is more of a presentation rather than Vito matching the dinosaurs.  I placed one piece of the dinosaur in the palette tray and the other on the basket.  Then I take one dinosaur from the basket and say “let’s look for a match”.  So basically, the child will learn objects that match. 


Dino Prints using Paints.  Another activity that I have to take picture before we do the actual thing.  As much as possible I try to involve paints in our unit activities to introduce Vito to arts.  This dino prints was not really appreciated by Vito. He couldn’t make a print out of a dinosaur yet, do he was quite frustrated, so he resorted to hand painting instead.

Discovering Dinosaurs in Ice. This was a total hit! I made these ahead of time and once they were ready both boys were so excited to touch and taste the ice!   
Integrating learning with sensory activities is so much fun!


Dinosaur Free Play. And of course, how can we not have a free play.  I let Vito play with the dinosaurs most of the time.   Vito and Mavi played the dino figures indoors (Mavi making stories)….. 
… and they also played with it outdoors!


More dinosaur activities!!
Over the years, we’ve done a number of wonderful dinosaur activities.  Click on the links below for more ideas!

Dinosaur and the land before time
Dinosaur activities
Digging Dinosaurs
Dinosaur and Worksheets
Preschool Dinosaur Activities
Homemade Dinosaur Fossils

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

For this week, I’d like to feature simple and easy to prepare activities. These would be best for busy moms like me!

FREE Yoga Poses Nomenclature Cards by Eager Ed
Spell Your Name Busy Bag by Spark and Pook
Beach Crafts for Kids to Make Dinnerware by Hands On As We Grow
A Week in the Life of Unschoolers by Nourishing My Scholar

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Fossils for Kids

Because Mavi is fascinated with dinosaurs and fossils, I always make it a habit to include it yearly in our homeschool activities.  If you are interested learning about our previous dinosaurs and fossils lessons here are the following links:

• Dinosaur and the Land Before Time
• Dinosaur Activity Sheets
• Dinosaur Math Activity
• Dinosaur Books
• Free Feathered Dinosaur Cards
• More Dinosaur Activities
• Dinosaur Cards and Worksheets
• Homemade Dinosaur Fossils
• Digging Up Dinosaurs

For this year, I focused on fossils alone as I wanted Mavi to understand how they became so relevant in defining history.

Fossils by definition are organisms or objects that indicates former presence of an organism which has been preserved in any natural deposit in or on the earth’s crust.  We examined the fossils we have on hand:  Safari Toob Fossil replicas, coral fossils and the animal impressions that we made.

There are different types of fossils.  One famous type of fossil is the preservation of insects found in resins, now known as amber.   Another are moulds of animals or plants; trails or tracks of animals and dinosaurs from thousands of years ago.

With this we made our own animal impressions using Safari Toob animal figures.  They all end up so pretty!   Making animal impressions in a clay is one of the easiest way to recreate a fossil.  Another is embedding an animal or object in an ice or clay similar to an amber.

These are coral fossils which we got from our latest trip to the Philippines.   Mavi described the difference between moulds and cast fossils like those of coral cavities that were filled with mineral substance. Then we examined each of our Safari Toob Ancient Fossils and identify them.  (Source: Safari Toob Fossils)

1. Eurypterid.  A sea scorpion called Mixopterus was discovered in Norway.  They ranged from 5 inches to over 7 feet long.
2. Fossilized Fish.  This is a Diplomystus specimen, typical of a surface feeding fish.  The Green River limestone deposits in Wyoming, USA have beautifully preserved all the fine details of these fossils.
3. Dinosaur Skin.  This is a famous fossil “mummies” of a duck-billed Hadrosaur which became entombed in a sandstone after its death.  The real one can be found in North Dakota, USA.
4. Tyrannosaurus Rex Tooth.  This tooth was found in Montana, USA. The T-Rex, one of the greatest predator possess the largest single teeth of any dinosaur.  They used these double edge, serrated blades to slice off huge pieces of flesh.
5. Dinosaur Foot.  The discoveries of dinosaur tracks and footprints are grouped into similar types and they are given generic names.  Anchisauripus prints were from a small plant-eater found in the state of Connecticut, USA.
6. Velociraptor Claw.  Velociraptor are very efficient hunter because of these large sickle-shaped claws that grow on each hind foot.  This claw was found in Mongolia in Central Asia.
7. Ammonite.  This is an ancient mollusc with a spiral shell.  These marine animals existed for more than 135 million years.  This species is known as Peltoceratoides  and was discovered in Russia.
8. Giant Crabs. Did you know that crabs evolved from lobsters during the Jurassic Period? This original specimens from Washington state, USA are among the finest preserved crab fossils having been buried in sand, soon after their deaths.
9. Trilobite.  They are one of the most important groups of early animals and their unusual appearance and age, make them appealing to fossil collectors worldwide.  They first appeared in the early Cambrian period and become extinct in the Permian, 320 million years ago.
10. Fossilized Frog.  This fossilized species of frog is fully articulated and possibly the ancestor of the modern spade foot toad.  This was collected in Wyoming, USA.

And the best part of a studying fossil is experiencing how these Palaeontologist dig and discover fossils!  Materials used in the tub:

• Learning Resources Fine Motor Tool Set
• Oatmeal
• Random magnifier glass
• Paint brush
• Safari Toob Ancient Fossils

Be sure to pin this post for future reference!

Dinosaur Books!

These are ALL the books we used as reference for Dinosaur Study.  This post contains affiliated links.

• Alphabet of Dinosaurs

I highly recommend this book for preschoolers who love dinosaurs and letters at the same time. Mavi has been obsessed with the alphabet for years and he always always relates the alphabet to any object he sees.

• Killer Dinosaurs
• Sea Monsters
• Giant Dinosaurs
• Flying Monsters

These are specific books that describes dinosaurs according to characteristics. My son borrowed ALL of these books from the library.

 

• Amazing Giant Dinosaurs

I personally prefer this book, unfortunately it is only limited to giant dinosaurs. It missed out some of my son’s favourite dinos.  

Hope this post is helpful in giving you ideas on what books to use when studying dinosaurs.

Have a nice day!

Dinosaur and the Land Before Time

My son is obsessed with dinosaurs. Majority of the books he borrowed from the library is about dinosaurs.  His birthday cake was decorated with dinosaurs. So when he begged that we’ll play with dinosaurs, I couldn’t resist.  He reads his dinosaur books every night and is eager to learn all about the beginning of times.  So considering all these factors, I put up an afterschool learning activity about the geological times and the era of dinosaurs.

Here are the activities we worked on this unit study.

FREE Feathered Dinosaur Cards

Hello everyone! I made these cards ages ago and we use it to play matching game with our Safari Feathered Dinosaur Toob.  I’ll be posting our Dino Study this week for more dino-related activities that you can do with your little people.  Hope you like my cards.  Enjoy!

Dinosaur Activity and Learning Materials

Hi everyone! My son had a sudden obsession with dinosaurs a few days ago and I thought that you will be interested with some of the resources we have.

These are Usborne Dinosaur Fact Cards which I got from Amazon.  My son described them as "awesome" cards.  We used these to identify dinosaurs in Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Period (sometimes sort them out), herbivores and carnivore dinosaurs and learn how to pronounce their names.

A few years ago, I made these cards as well which you can download for FREE.  I made them out of the Safari Toob Dinosaur replica.

Here's an activity sheet that comes with it as well. We used them to record our findings about a dinosaur (using our Usborne Fact Cards mentioned above).

You can get the link by clicking any of the images below.

And lastly, here's a wonderful collection of dinosaur coloring pages from www.dinosaur-coloring.com! My son loves them to pieces.  I practically printed everything from this web page and my son worked on all of them!

I hope you like this activity!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and our FREE Downloads and Learning Materials page.

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