Paper Plate Dinosaur Fun

I'm all about easy crafts that do not require too much fuss so I LOVE working with paper plates! The Lil Divas love to paint and it's so fun to create things out of something so ordinary.

Today, I am going to share our Paper Plate Dinosaurs with you.

Paper Plate Dinosaurs

What You Need:

2 paper plates

paint (colors of choosing)

scissors

glue

wiggly eye

 black marker

What We Did:

1. The Lil Divas painted 2 large paper plates and we let them sit until dry. I let them choose their own colors so you see we eneded up with 1 pink dinosaur from the lil princess that LOVES all thing PINK! :)

2. Cut out the inner circle of the plate - careful to leave the outer edge in good condition.



3. Using the outer edge I cut a long neck and tail and using the inner circle I made some legs. This can be traced using a template and cut out by older children who can handle it.

4. Draw a nose & mouth and add wiggly eye.

5. The lil divas wanted to add spots so they each chose a 2nd paitn color and went to work.

 The Lil Divas finished paper plate dinosaurs!



Dinosaur Books We Read:

D is for Dinosaur - Dino Dig Fossil Art

After our dino dig activity  I was inspired to do some Dino Dig Art with the girls.

I had planned to make fossils using pasta but after our project I thought it would be fun to make our pasta look like partially excavated bones.

What You Need:

macaroni pasta

spaghetti

wheel shaped pasta

ground coffee

glue

cardboard (for background)

What We Did:

1. I drew an outline of a dinosaur fossil on a piece of cardboard for each Lil Diva. It was just lines/sticks nothing fancy - it was meant to be a basic guide not an illustration.

2. The Lil Divas decided which pasta they wanted to use out of what we had in our cupboard. They opted to use macaroni for most of the bones (not elbow macaroni), spaghetti for the ribs, fingers & toes and wheel shaped pasta for the head.

3. After gluing down the pasta fossil we covered the entire cardboard area with glue

4. Then The Lil Divas covered the area with ground coffee - this was our dirt! It smelled so much better than dirt - YUMMY!

5. Let it sit for a few minutes so that the coffee does not shake off when you eliminate the excess.

6. Shake off the excess coffee and you are left with your partially fossilized looking pasta art!



The Lil Divas were so proud of their fossils and it was a nice sensory activity with the yummy smells and different textures.

Books We Read:

Bern

D is for Dinosaur: ABC Book Craft & Dino Math Activities

ABC Book Craft - Dinosaur D

Our lil dinosaur was inspired by a notepad I bought at our local teacher store.

I knew we were going to make a dinosaur but once my lil diva saw the notepad 

she wanted her dinosaur to look like him - so that is what we tried to recreate. 

What You Need:

Letter D cut-out (card stock)

foam cut-outs of feet, tail, neck & head

(optional) small triangle cut-outs

wiggly eye

black permanent marker

construction paper (for background)

What To Do:

1. Color Letter D

2. Glue D onto background paper (as shown below)

3. Add legs, neck, head and tail

4. add triangle shaped spikes to body (letter D)

5. small spikes to head

6. add wiggly eye and draw nose & mouth

Now you have your Dinosaur Letter D to add to your ABC Book

(view our other ABC Book Crafts)

We have been doing some fun dino themed learning activities.

I found a fabulous Preschool Dinosaur Pack from Two Teaching Mommies

& have been using lots of different activities from it. 

Alphabet Letter Match -

This is great letter recognition practice. 

The Lil Divas had to match upper and lower case letters from egg to dinosaur.

Dino Math Fun:

The 4yr old Diva worked on Dinosaur Clip Cards from the Dinosaur pack.

She had to count the dinosaurs and place the clip on the correct number.

Great counting, number identification and dexterity practice.

My 5yr old did some simple addition practice.

She rolled a dice and used little dinosaur toys to help her add.

I also had her practice writing out the number sentences for each problem.

Books:

Bern

D is for Dinosaur: A Hands-on Ice Age Dino Dig

You simply can't teach kids about dinosaurs without letting them do a Dino Dig of some sort!


I have been waiting for the opportunity to let the Lil Divas excavate items out of ice and this seemed like the perfect time! Why not freeze our dino bones and let them do an Ice Age Dino Dig?! FUN!

What We Did:

I used the above dinosaur skulls and froze them in small dixie cups.

I froze a little water first then added the skulls and topped with more water so that they were mostly in between the ice blocks. I left some of the skulls on top and some near the bottom as well for a mix.

The Lil Divas used blunt kiddie knives to pick at the ice and warm water to melt it.

The Lil Divas were so excited to excavate the skulls. It was a fabulous activity.

Once all the dino skulls were out, we matched them up on the card that came in the toob and read about each skull.

Books We Read:

Have you done any fun ice excavations or dino activities with your kids lately? I'd love to hear about them. 

Bern