Dinosaur activities – Day 2

Disclaimer for dinosaurs day 2. There was no formal “academics today”. Instead the boys made slime and just played an imaginary game with it and their dinosaur figurines. I think they learn just as much through play to be completely honest, but if you’re here for a link or a worksheet, today isn’t the day for you. Apologies. Come back tomorrow!

I’ve found the dinosaur theme to actually be rather overwhelming. It is extraordinarily popular online, so there are quite possibly millions of resources and activities to choose from. Whilst this made my job, of planning out our week, easy, it did make it hard to really narrow in and focus on any particular detail. We most likely will come back and do another Dino week at the end of the summer because there is so much more I’d like to do. Enough waffling on: the craft!

For the craft you will need

popsicle sticks
glue
colored paper
Scissors
a printer
markers
the dinosaur templates (linked below)

I super dig any activity that involves a popsicle stick. So when I saw these cuties on In The Bag Kids Crafts I knew I had to give them a try. I printed the templates onto colored card and away we went! Quick note though: there were actually 5 dinosaur templates offered in the blog, but I noticed that the pterodactyl needed two pieces of card as only one wing was on the template. I’m all about the easy, and didn’t want the waste of printing two when I only needed a second wing. So I left that one out. The Lorax would thank me.

I let the boys cut out their own templates, but I helped with the glue gun and sticking the popsicle sticks around the edge of the triangle bodies. To be honest they probably could use it themselves, but about a year ago I mentioned it was dangerous, and William lives for a rule and never forgets anything. Every time I get it out he mutters, “that’s too dangerous for kids to be involved” and frankly I’m not ready to explain to him that he can do it now, in case he starts sorting through all the other stuff I’ve ever told him is too dangerous, and he wants to do all that too. Mr “everything in the universe must be blue” busied himself coloring the whole of his yellow triceratops blue with a marker. This took him forever, and it wasn’t even blue at the end of it, More a murky green, but he was happy!

The boys chatted as they worked, and decided that their dinosaurs were super hero dinosaur best friends. William made two T-Rexs. I thought they had pretty threatening faces, and when he put them together I told him it looked like they were fighting. He told me, in his very manner of fact way, that they were hugging, and that they couldn’t help their faces. I’m pretty sure my 5 year old just explained resting bitch face to me using paper dinosaurs.

We’re reading Little House in the Big Woods at bedtime at the moment, and we read about Laura and Mary made paper dolls with their Mum. These were our version of paper dolls. I went to put Arthur down for a sleep and when I came back the boys were still at the kitchen table, playing with their dinosaurs, making them talk to each other.

I had a whole stegosaurus math activity planned for academic time, but the boys had had such a wonderful morning playing together with their popsicle stick dinos that I decided to forgo it for something more entertaining that Arthur could do too. I’ve wanted to get tuff trays or messy trays for the boys for a while. However they are ridiculously expensive, for what is basically a shallow box. I read online somewhere that you could get under the bed storage boxes instead for like $5 each. I had ordered 3 last week and they turned up today. Perfect chance to give them a test run!

I found a recipe for easy slime online. It is linked below, but basically it’s dish soap, corn starch and water. If you’re in the UK that’s washing up liquid, corn flour, and water. Sort of wish we had a different word for water, just to stick with the theme there. The beauty of this “recipe” is that you can sort of eyeball it and add however much of whatever to get different textures. More cornstarch and it’s like silly putty. More water and it becomes swampy. I let the boys measure out their own stuff and mix it all up. I have the big boys food coloring to add to theirs but I knew Arthur would get his hands everywhere and food coloring spreads like the plague. So he had to accept his without.

We really could have stopped the activity right here. The absolute joy they got out of mixing their potions up and creating their goo could have been the whole thing and they would have been happy. Ted kept screaming about his “speriment” and how he was a scientist. He mixed the whole thing so carefully with his spoon, being very cautious about not getting it on his hands. Just like his coloring and writing, he loves to be as neat as possible. My other big kid is the opposite. His handwriting, his coloring, all messy. He’s here on planet earth for the facts. He’s content over creation. Every day of the week. It’s no surprise then that he dumped the spoon and just shoved his hands in to get it done.

After a while of squishing and squelching all our ingredients together I got our our dinosaur figurine box. The kids chose a few each and threw them into their gloops. I settled down to sort the thousands of socks they wear a week into pairs, and even managed to watch Hulu on our Alexa. Messy play always keeps them occupied the longest. The pay off from having so much tidying up to do afterwards always makes having some time to myself worth it. These shallow boxes are going to be my item of the summer. I can just tell. Perhaps I’ll manage to watch the whole of Marple before they get bored of slime this year. A girl can dream. Join us tomorrow when we plan on taking the messiness outside. The weather is meant to be lovely, and after today I’ll want to save my kitchen table from another hammering.