Preschool Dinosaur Activities - Dinosaur Land

As a preschool teacher you know that a popular universal theme for preschoolers is dinosaurs. Add these preschool dinosaur activities to your list of favorites!

This idea finds a way to use playdough that is past its prime to create a fantasy land that your children will create and love. It was sent to me by one of my readers who wanted it posted for all to share.

You can use it to teach colors, textures, counting, landscape such as lakes, hills, mountains, foliage, etc. It lends itself to so many opportunities to teach using "hands-on" methods. That is my preference 100%.


Dinosaur Land

I had a large amount of homemade playdough that was past it's prime and instead of throwing it away the children and I used it to sculpt a land for our miniature dinosaurs. We started with a large plastic tray. We actually used a re-purposed diaper changing tray so it was very large. Any size would work, but the large size gave us room for many possibilities. We started pressing the playdough into the tray and playing with it creating mountains, volvanos, a depression for a pond, trails with dino footprints, dinosuars nests with effs, etc. We added plastic foiliage for trees, bushes, and flowers. When we had just the way we wanted it we let it dry for a couple of days. It dried to a hard state, with some surface cracks that made it look even better. In the depressed pond area we put glue with a little blue paint and let it dry overnight. It looked just like a little pond of water and gave the little dinos a well used watering hole. The kids played with this for weeks, and were very careful to preserve it as we made it. They were anxious to make repairs as plants would come dislodged. When it finally started to crumble it was easy to pull the plactic pieces out and get rid of the rest. This was one of my most successful impromptu activites.


If you like these preschool dinosaur activities, check out the other ideas in the Preschool Planner.

http://www.preschoolplanner.com/thefullstory.html

There are Two Editions now for the Preschool Planner: Basic or Platinum.

If you prefer lessons which have ideas for the Toddler Age, go here to the second volume of lessons. There is an entire bonus section devoted to TODDLERS.

http://www.preschoolwhiz.com/v2.html

Send me any ideas you would like to share and I will post them on my Blog.

Mary
marys.plans@gmail.com