Play Dough Dinosaur Printing

Play Dough Dinosaur Printing:  “Stomp Chomp, Big Roars, Here Come the Dinosaurs!” I absolutely love the name of this book by Kaye Umansky and Nick Sharratt.  I would have read this book to my kids about 100 times and we never get bored with the fun little rhymes about dinosaurs.

To follow on from this gorgeous book and extend the learning about dinosaurs, we set up an invitation to play with play dough and dinosaur figurines. The activity turned into a fun learning experience about patterns, printing and measurement concepts.  It also provided an opportunity to build fine motor development, coordination and concentration.

What you will need?

You will need play dough <easy recipe here>, rolling pin, dinosaur figurines and the “Stomp Chomp Big Roars! Here come the Dinosaurs!” book by Kaye Umansky and Nick Sharratt is optional.

Let’s Play

Some Ideas:

• Print the different dinosaurs into the play dough to make patterns.
• Print different parts of the dinosaurs bodies into the play dough to compare size, shape and pattern. For example the different foot prints, head prints and tails print.
• Talk about the different shapes, prints and patterns. Use language such as this dinosaur’s tail print is longer than triceratops tail print.

Let’s Learn

We compared the prints and patterns of spikes, heads, feet and bodies of the dinosaurs but when we compared the play dough prints of the dinosaur tails, this provided a great opportunity to explore the concept of length and compare the length of tails. Some dinosaurs bodies were bigger than their tails and other dinosaurs who had really long bodies had shorter tails.  We explored the measurement language of short, shorter, shortest and long, longer and longest.

Learning Opportunities

• Creativity
• Fine Motor Development
• Hand-Eye Coordination and Control
• Cause and Effect
• Concentration
• Spatial awareness
• Measurement and maths concepts: length, size and patterns.
• Language development
• Imaginative play

Small World Play – Dinosaurs

You can create your Dinosaur Small World a number or ways such as in a sand pit or garden bed but for our small world these are the items we used: toy dinosaurs, rocks or pebbles, blue cellophane for water, plants and other objects such a bridge that we had part of another toy kit.

We set up our Dinosaur Small World with the Dinosaur Story handy for utilising during play and re-enacting some of the parts and lines in the story.

Small World Learning Opportunities

• It provides opportunities for children to identify with the adult world.  Practice and role play their understanding and interpretation.
• Develop social skills: practicing negotiation skills, turn taking and sharing. Provides opportunities for working out problems and experimenting with solutions.
• Emotional development: Understanding and expressing their feelings through the re-enactment of certain experiences.  Taking on roles that encourage discipline and empathy.
• Encourages imagination: Children can be anyone and do anything in the pretend world.
• Develop language skills: practicing listening, looking and talking.  Being spoken to and talking with other people, also developing an understanding of what is being communicated through body language such as smiles and nodding.
• I also believe that imaginative play is a great way for children to relax and unwind from their busy lives.