Dinosaurs!

[Guest]

Hello everyone. After much discussion with the children and observations I have decided to have a dinosaur theme next term.

I have searched the forum but not come up with much! (Not sure if I did it right!) So was wondering if all you wonderful people had some ideas for me please. Also would like to base my role-play around this theme as well. One of the children suggested a musuem?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Jane x

[bgfrancis]

Could you start the theme on the first day of term by having giant dinosaur footprints leading from the classroom door through to the front of your classroom? Have the children discuss what they are/ where they came from etc.

 

Tuff spot filled with mud and toy dinosaurs for children to create their own dinosaur footprints.

 

Dinosaurs hidden in sand for the children to discover. Or even better, in mud outside. Don't tell the children they are there, just suggest some clearing up or digging. Act amazed when the first dinosaur is discovered and watch as more appear!

 

Could you 'find' fossils in your outside area and use them as a discussion point?

 

You could create a massive dinosaur collage to stick on your wall, perhaps using it as a chance to explore textures and colours.

 

Just a few ideas i've had as i'm planning on having a dinosaur theme at some point soon! Hope they help.

[Panders]

#surprised you didn't find much on here about dinosaurs, however, when we have done them in the past, we have made fossils, with youngest children we have pushed our toy dinosaurs feet into salt dough and then baked them, we have hidden some in the sand etc.

 

We have made our own dinosaur jigsaw puzzles.

 

We have a number of commercially made dinosaur games.

 

We have made a nest with dinosaur eggs, (balloons and paper mache)

 

We have sorted them by size, colour, length etc.

 

We have made dinosaur feet and hands for the children to wear out of cardboard

 

We have some dinosaur music and so the children have a music and movement session pretending to be dinosaurs

 

For our dinosaur museum, which we did last term, we covered a table in paper and put dinosaurs on it, some children drew round the dinosaurs, some began writing their names, we put one in a plastic box (ferrero rocher), I made the mistake of putting out a mammoth and one of the boys told me, that couldn't possibly be with the TRex, because it wasn't alive then!! Which led to us sorting the dinosaurs into Triassic, Jurassic etc.

 

They made dinosaur masks, puppets on sticks and put the toy dinosaurs into the swamp (gloop)

 

We haven't yet attempted a volcano experiment, but I don't think that would be too difficult from what I've seen on the internet.

[Guest]

we have a group of boys obssessed with dinosaurs at the mo and need encouraging to touch a pencil if you know what i mean!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we took photos of each dinosaur and laminated with name of dinosaur on the back(with a broken down way of prounancing it for adults!!) we have found that putting some form of writing equipment next to them they will pick out letters to write, we also took photos of groups of dinosaurs ie meat eaters etc we use the dinosaurs to draw around and use upside down decorated boxes to make into mountains and volcanos for the dinosaurs we have some wonderful books as well that we keep with the box of dinosaurs.

our wow cards are also now in the form of dinosaur footprints that go around the setting!!

[Inge]

skeleton pictures using straws...

 

volcano is brilliant.. use bicarb with red food colour in a small pot.and add lime or lemon juice . we used a small yog. one but any will do.. vinegar is the usual liquid, depends on if you can stand the smell

 

Inge

[Inge]

for previous ideas ....

 

look here

 

and here

 

another

 

more

 

dinosaur planning

 

websites

 

not checked them all so may be many ideas repeated.. or out of date links..

 

if you put Dinosaurs in the search forum posts and then just trawl down there may well be others..

 

Inge

[Guest]

Hi,

 

We have just finished a dinosaur topic in Reception that the children loved. We started when one Monday morning I hid a large papier mache egg (made around a balloon and pained cream) in the classroom and partway through the morning a child found it. We discussed what might be inside and decided we had better look after it. We made a nest for it and the children wrote signs so that anyone coming into the classroom would know to be careful and quiet around the egg! After a couple of days of imagining what might be inside the egg, it had hatched into a baby dinosaur! The children were really excited and all thought of 'D' names that evening for him (we settled on Douglas). We then read dinosaur books and set up our role play as the lost property office in the museum from Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs - this took quite a lot of modeling as the children didn't have much experience of it, but it led to some great descriptive conversations and independent writing (jotting down info about lost items, taking phone messages etc). We also had a dinosaur swamp with mud and plastic dinosaurs outside and made fossils using our footprints in our creative area. Douglas went home with different children and when he came back, we wrote a class sentence about what he had done with whoever he was staying with. The children loved looking after him and it proved to be an excellent motivator to get even some of the more reluctant writers writing!

[Guest]

Thank you everyone, so much. I am really excited now!

 

Jane x