If your kids are feeling enthusiastic about dinosaurs, this can be a fun starting point for a dino-themed learning plan. Here are some ideas about incorporating dinosaur themed activities into the learning plans for your child care centre.

Babies

In the baby's room, dinosaur themed music can be a great way to encourage your kids to move around and imitate dinosaurs, which stimulates gross motor development. Try reading some dinosaur storybooks, and encourage the children to act out roles and pretend to be the dinosaurs. Kids like to stomp and roar, and pretend to be dinosaurs as part of their creative play.

Toddlers

For the toddlers, use dinosaur themed figurines to act out dinosaur themed activities. There are several popular kids TV shows that have animated dinosaurs, with strongly science-based story lines. Watch one of the shows and get the children to act out the story line with their figurines. Set up some dinosaur themed and get them children to create play scenes in the sand pit, which you can photograph and turn into a picture book for the class.

You can also incorporate drawings and paintings that the children have done of the dinosaurs; to create a resource you can refer back to throughout the year. 

Kindergarten

Show the children that the dinosaurs existed in different eras, and discuss animals that still have a lot in common with their dinosaur ancestors such as the crocodile. Explore the idea that dinosaurs all had different strengths (such as flying, swimming, fast running etc.) and link this back to the fact that all of the children in the class have different personality traits and are good at different tasks. Encourage the children to create their own dinosaur with aspects of existing dinosaurs, and create names and stories for their own creations.

Kindergarten aged children are enthusiastic diggers, so plant some toy 'fossils' in the sand pit to explore the process of discovering and uncovering fossils. You can explain how paleontologists find the dinosaur bones, too.

All ages

A dinosaur themed lesson plans can also feature an excursion to the local museum. Children love to explore the museum displays and are often equally excited by the journey to and from the museum. Bring a storybook along and read some stories while you are in the dinosaur rooms to cement and link the learning experiences.

Dinosaur-themed learning experiences are highly engaging for young children and a great opportunity to let your children explore early science topics at their own pace.

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