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I don’t know about anyone else, but my Toddler loves dinosaurs. And dinosaurs kinda tend to be everywhere nowadays. They’re the thing to like. So I had to grab hold of the opportunity to do a dino devotion. If we’re going to be all about dinosaurs, let’s try to use that as a learning tool, am I right? Here’s what our Dino Devos looked like
Fingerplay
This finger play was the core of our week. If we love dinos so much, let’s talk about how God made them. I found a finger play called God Made The Dinosaurs on Pinterest, and with lots of help from my husband adapted it for our bilingual home.
Dios Hizo Los Dinosaurios
Dios hizo los dinosaurios grandes y poderosos (flex muscles)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios chiquitos y cariñosos (crouch down small)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios que vuelan en el cielo (spread arms wide and pretend to fly)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios que que caminan por el suelo (stomp feet)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios, unos ferozes (roar and make a ferocious face)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios, unos velozes (run in place)
Dios hizo los dinosaurios para dormir (pretend to sleep)
Dioz hizo los dinosaurios para rugir (ROAR!)
Rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr RAWR! (Stomp feet and ROAR).
Fingerplays are great for literacy and vocabulary building. The rhyme and rhythm helps work little brains.
Dinosaur Small World
Doing a dinosaur theme, we had to create an opportunity to play. Here were the materials we used in our small world:
Dinosaur Small World Bin:
- Dinosaur Toys (we got ours from the Dollar Store, but Amazon has some similar).
- Split Peas
- Back Beans
- Rocks
- Fake plants from the Dollar Store
- Blue Slime for water (we put it in a canning jar lid.
- Dinosaur Eggs Oatmeal made up our nesting area.
- Volcano (brown paper wrapped around an empty soda bottle cut in half)
And of course, at the end of the week we had our volcano erupt with a little help from baking soda and vinegar.
D is for Dinosaur
Guys, we don’t have a printer, so we don’t really do a lot of worksheets or coloring pages. But this week I decided to make one (and I figured out how to link the file below). It’s not super fancy, but Vale loved it and colored it gleefully. Then we fed our dinosaur some “Letter D” cookies. We had some Happy Tot Alphabet Snacks on hand. I used a food coloring marker to make the letters stand out.
(I used letters she already knew, as well as the letter “D”. Then we found the letter “D” to feed to our dinosaur. Vale is still pretty new to the letters and a little young, so finding them was a team effort, but we still had fun working together and playing with the Dino Snacks.
Reusable Stickers
This week we played with Melissa and Doug Reusable Stickers. As you can see, this sticker pad has been well-loved. It makes for a super simple invitation to play. I set out the scene and stickers as an activity Vale can do whenever. It’s fairly independent play, and the sticking and re-sticking the stickers is good fine-motor development.
Dino Snacks
Media
This week read a few dinosaur books. By far our favorite is Usborne Peek Inside Dinosaurs book. This is Naomi’s favorite book right now. You have never seen a 4 month old so excited to read!
We also used our Amazon Prime Account to download some books to my kindle app. It’s a great way to keep Vale entertained on the go.
Find the Dinosaurs a Team Umizoomi Book, teaches kids about dinosaurs and math as they search for dinosaurs that have been lost around the city.
Tyrannosaurus Wrecks! is a book about dinosaurs who go to school and a T-rex that just can’t seem to get things right. It talks about social skills and school rules, using dinosaurs to relate to a preschooler’s interest.
We also watched the Land Before Time! Also, if you didn’t know, the DVD is Spanish Dubbed. You can find it and 5 more on my list: 6 Preschool Dinosaur Shows in Spanish.
Science Museum
Finally, every good dinosaur week needs to end at a museum. We visited the Science Museum of Minnesota to see some real dinosaurs, and it did not disappoint.
Baby Devotions 