Dinosaur Preschool Activities

We kicked off our preschool year with our Dinosaur preschool unit and had an absolute blast. Three years ago we completed a summer long dinosaur unit and it holds some of our most precious memories of learning together. Most kids LOVE dinosaurs at some point in their life and my kids are no different. They are all about those "pera-dactyls" and t-rexes. 

The majority of the activities came from my the dinosaur unit from my Play and Learn Preschool Curriculum. It was such a fun way to kick off our learning and today I am sharing with you some of the activities that we did. 

 

Here is the calendar of activities we followed.

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Dinosaur Themed Sensory Play

Our Dinosaur themed sensory play activities included an entire dino themed dig site, playdough small world kit, musical dino tracks, and dino mud/water bin. 

For the dinosaur dig site dramatic play, I simply filled an under the bed storage tote with some sand, rocks, Safari LTD dinosaurs, dinosaur skeletons, and some green crinkle paper. The kids spent hours upon hours playing in their dino dig site. 

Another favorite from our unit, were these playdough kits. I made some homemade playdough, added in some random loose parts and dinosaur toys from around the house and again the kids spent hours playing with this throughout the course of our unit. 

Musical dino tracks was so much fun and a great way to get some energy out. I laid around the dinosaur foot prints, turned on some music and we danced around like dinosaurs. When I stopped the music the kids had to pick up a dinosaur track and do the activity on it. Activities on the footprints included things like walk like a crab, hop on one foot 5 times etc. 

We took our learning and play outside and the kids played with their dinosaurs in mud and then finished off with a water bin to clean them all up. I missed getting a picture of the mud, but let's just say you couldn't tell what the dinosaurs were before they went into the water. They definitely needed a Dino Bath. 

 

Dinosaur Themed Letter, Number, Shape, Color Activities

Our focus skills for our Dinosaur unit were the letter Dd, Number 3, Triangle, and Green. 

On day 1 I introduced the focus skills to Mr. 4 with our skill mats. We discussed each of them, he traced and completed each of the mats with a dry erase marker and then he went on a color hunt around the house.  

One of my favorite things to use to practice manipulating and letters, numbers, and shapes is playdough and I love adding in an extra step. For Day 2, Mr. 4 built a letter Dd, Number 3, and Triangle with green playdough and then used a small dinosaur toy to "trace" the playdough again and leave behind fooprints. 

Paint + Dinosaurs. Need I say more. So much fun. Simply dip some dinosaur footprints in some paint and walk them around the paper to make the letter, number, and shape. Mr. 4 practiced Dd, 3, and triangle and I had Miss 6 spell out the number three and triangle and then she came up with words that began with Dd and spelled those with dino tracks. 

Our last activity from this part of the curriculum got us up and moving again. I placed all our green dinosaur tracks on the living room floor and Mr. 4 had to stomp around from track to track identifying each of the letters, shapes, and numbers on the cards. 

Dinosaur Fine Motor & Gross Motor Activities

This section of activities is included in the curriculum to ensure all letters, numbers, shapes, and colors are practiced through the entire year. If a theme needs to be skipped it is ok and they won't miss anything important because of these fine and gross motor activities that incorporate playful learning activities for all letters, all colors, all numbers, and all shapes. 

Hidden Numbers/Letters Search and Find was a hit a few years ago and was a huge hit again this year. I simply hid some letters and numbers (sight words and -ed words for Miss 6) under some sand on one of our activity trays and the kids had to be paleontologists and very carefully use their brushes to brush away the sand on the cards and identify what they said. 

Shape dinosaurs was one of the favorite dinosaur preschool crafts from the unit. I had various shapes cut out of green construction paper ahead of time, set out some glue, and let them choose the dinosaurs that they created. 

We love playing with playdough in our house. Mr. 4 practice color recognition and fine motor skills by rolling out some different colored dinosaur eggs. I would call out a color for him to point to and then he would come through and smash the eggs. 

 

Dinosaur Number Sense & Counting Activities

Mr. 4 worked on identifying and counting numbers through 10 this week. He counted as high as he could go (50), counted and identified quantities of dinosaurs, lined up dinosaurs from 1-10, and completed some dinosaur clip cards. 

I laid out piles of dino eggs and Mr. 4 had to count each pile and identify the quantity. He used our felt numbers to give a number to each pile. 

 

This is one of my favorite types of activities I have done with the kids over and over again. Simply line up some number manipulatives from 1-10 and then give your kids some themed manipulatives, in our day dinosaurs, and they can line up the correct number of dinosaurs under each number. This is a great way to see (if lined up) that as you count you go up one each time. 

 

Clip cards are great for working those fine motor muscles while counting and identifying numbers all the same time. 

Dinosaur Art, Crafts, Science Activities

We started off the week by making some dinosaur bones and fossils from salt dough. We created some salt dough, rolled out some "rocks" and used dinosaur toys to make footprints in the salt dough, as well as created bone shapes of different lengths. Once dry, we used them in our sensory bin and for some math activities. 

If you have some boxes laying around, this is a super fun activity to do. Cut apart some cardboard and create a cardboard head and hot glue to the box. Paint and decorate the box to look like a dinosaur. We didn't get to this activity this year because we didn't have any boxes, but enjoy a picture from our dinosaur unit three years ago. 

I absolutely love how these turned out. The kids painted a sunset on some watercolor paper and once it dried they cut out their black dinosaur silhouettes that I had drawn on a piece of black paper. I absolutely love how these turned out. 

 And the kids said that this Chocolate Chip paleontology activity was the BEST part of the unit. I hyped up this activity and they were so excited and had a blast. I gave each kiddo a cookie and toothpick and they had to work very diligently to get all of the chocolate chips out of the cookie without breaking the cookie. They were super careful little paleontologists and had a blast. I love seeing the look of concentration on little ones faces. 

Dinosaur Themed Math Activities

For math, I taped a large dinosaur footprint on the floor and the kids had to use two different kinds of blocks to measure how long the footprint was. We discussed what a ruler is and how it very important we have a ruler because it is a standard measuring tool. If we measured everything with blocks noone would ever get the same measurement because not all blocks are the same size. We had two different colors of rulers and despite them being different colors, they were the exact same size. This was a perfect way for both kids to see how important standard measuring tools are. 

We used the salt dough bones and fossils we made to sort fossils and bones and then used the bones to discuss different lengths and put them in order from longest to shortest. 

 

Little Man practiced counting on a ten frame and used little glass gems as dinosaur eggs. 

He finished off the week by sorting Dinosaur eggs by color. We used this color sorting activity, but you can always use plastic eggs or different colored playdough balls as well.  

Dinosaur Themed Literacy Activities

Letter paleontology is a fun activity to do to practice identifying all letters. You can see more ways to do this letter paleontology activity here. For this week, I simply took all the letters from our foam letter puzzle, hid them in our dinosaur sensory bin, and Mr. 4 would find a letter, say the letter name, and then add it back into the puzzle. 

Miss 6 played teacher for our Rhyming dino tracks activity. She would give Little Man a picture card, say the word, and he would then have to find the matching rhyming dinosaur track. When he had matched all dino track rhymes, he dino stomped and read each rhyming pair and gave me another word that rhymed with the other two. 

 

I hid the letter fossil cards in our sensory bin and Mr. 4 would find one, say the letter, and then find and trace it on his mat. 

 

Dinosaur Themed Preschool Journal Activities

On our final day of the week we practiced narrating a story and completed some journal activities. All week long we read through some dinosaur stories, but our favorite was  We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins. We all thought it was hilarious. For the narration portion, I had the kids retell the story. I had my phone recording them so that I didn't miss anything they said. Once we finished the narration, I took my phone back to my computer and then typed out their narration. I printed it out and the kids then drew a picture to match their narration. I am going to compile all of these into a book so we can look back on them at the end of the year to see how far their narration has come. 

 

Journal activities consisted of sticker letter Dds, a q-tip painted green triangle, tracing numbers 2s, and drawing pictures of things that are green. 

 

In addition to all of the activities from the calendar, we did many of the activities from my two Dinosaur Busy Binders. 

Check out our  Dinosaur Family Movie Night.

We had such a wonderful time playing and learning together with our dinosaur themed activities and look forward to our upcoming weeks of fun. 

Want the Plans & Printables?

You can find all activities, plans, directions, and printables from our dinosaur unit here. 

Or grab the entire Preschool Curriculum Bundle here.   

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