Dinosaur Week
Sometimes I base our movie night off of our week’s theme, and other times I base the theme off a movie I want to watch. In preparation for an upcoming Yellowstone/Tetons trip, I picked the movie The Good Dinosaur. (If you’ve seen that movie, look up some pictures of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I swear, the movie is based in that location.) That made picking this week’s theme easy: dinosaur week!
Dinosaur Week Books:
Our library makes finding books with this theme easy: each dinosaur book spine is labeled for easy finding (there are labels for other popular subjects, too). I passed up on a lot of books and picked two that looked cute and fun for both of us to read:
– Tea Rex (Molly Idle) includes instructions for a proper tea party set against comedic illustrations of a T Rex making a mess of two children’s tea party.
– Hattie and Hudson (Chris Van Dusen, technically it’s a sea monster, but my three-year-old doesn’t care about the difference and the story was great)
We already have How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen on our shelf, and my daughter has it read to her every night, so we included that in our mix. I highly recommend the How Do Dinosaurs series. They’re just fun!
Dino Week Crafts: Dinosaur Feet
Always one to use garbage for crafts, I asked my husband to not take some pizza boxes to the garbage. We used the not-so-greasy tops for this craft, and I even made myself a pair of dinosaur feet. Cute, right? Here are the easy steps:
1. Trace your child’s feet on the top of any piece of cardboard (we used the top of a pizza box). Thinner cardboard will be easier to cut.
2. Draw the shape of a dinosaur foot around your child’s foot, with at least a half inch of extra room on the sides and top. The gnarlier the toes/claws, the better!
3. Cut out the dino foot shape and let your child color it. Top, bottom, whatever! Just be sure to not use bumpy add-ons, since that might make them less comfortable to walk on.
4. Poke holes on either side of the child’s foot tracing line, and put ribbon or string through. These will be used to tie them on to your child’s foot. (Note: I found that ribbon was better than yarn, since the yarn stretches through use and the foot becomes loose.
5. Tie the ribbon around your child’s foot and host the dino stomp! (Stomping is about the only way to wear them, I can tell you from experience.) My little loved to make “claw hand” and stomp around the house rawr-ing like a dinosaur. See if you can find other things around the house to complete the costume!
Note: If you find that they are a little too slippery, make some hot glue squiggles on the bottom to create a slip-resistance dinosaur shoe.
Dino Week snack: Dinosaur eggs
I love good food, but not necessarily elaborate food. I also don’t want my kids’ snacks to be sugar-based or take eons to prepare for two minutes of eating time. This determines whether I’ll do a fun or “themed” snack. Many weeks, I opt out. But this week, there was a super easy option: dinosaur eggs!
Boiled eggs are already a staple snack here, so this was easy. Take a boiled egg, some crayons, and color spots on the eggs. Let the kids get super creative and crazy with how they design it. Then, “hatch” the eggs and add salt and pepper for a easy, healthy snack!
