Dressing Up for Dinosaur Day

To mark the start of a week of dinosaur and fossil themed learning, children in Year 2 at Southglade Primary School (Nottinghamshire, England), were given the opportunity to wear their favourite dinosaur T-shirt to school.  Some children had brought in dinosaur costumes, others had their faces painted, so the Everything Dinosaur team member who spent the morning with the two classes felt very much at home.

Whilst talking through the learning objectives for the dinosaur workshops with members of the enthusiastic teaching team, our expert remarked on how spacious and well-organised the classrooms were.  There was lots of evidence of various challenging fiction and non-fiction based writing projects on display, hopefully the suggestion about children in class 2HD having a pet Triceratops and what adventures it might get up to might inspire these budding young palaeontologists to write a short story about a dinosaur visiting their school.

Dinosaur Day

Teaching Assistant Mrs Walker had got into the spirit of the scheme of work by converting a hat into a dinosaur, how very creative.  Can the children work out whether this dinosaur was a carnivore or a herbivore by examining the triangular and very sharp-looking teeth that Mrs Walker had cleverly added to her dinosaur themed headgear?

Mrs Walker – Complete with Dinosaur Hat

Mrs Walker with her dinosaur hat.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur/Southglade Primary School

Enthusiastic and Creative Teaching Teams

Under the dedicated tutelage of the enthusiastic and creative teaching team the children in classes 2E and 2HD are bound to have lots fun whilst learning a great deal about prehistoric animals over the next few days.   Mrs Walker had even added some big green eyes to her dinosaur hat.  Can the children come up with a name for this dinosaur, how about “hatty-saurus”!

Dinosaur Hat Up Close

A big-eyed dinosaur with spikes.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur/Southglade Primary School

The green spikes located on the head (also known as the skull, as discovered by Year 2 today), are very impressive and we love the big eye.  All to soon, it was time to leave, but we provided a dinosaur themed measuring exercise for the children to try, plus a novel extension activity that involves using some everyday materials to measure just how large a Tyrannosaurus rex could be.

Further Extension Resources to Support Learning Objectives

 Once back at the Everything Dinosaur HQ there was just time to send out some emails with dinosaur drawing materials and fact sheets to help support the learning objectives.

To view the range of educational, dinosaur-themed toys and games available from Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Toys and Gifts.

Kicking off the Term Topic – Dinosaurs

Children in Class One and Class Two at All Saints’ Church of England Primary School (Stockport, Cheshire), have started the second half of the spring term with a real roar!  These two classes are studying dinosaurs, fossils and life in the past with the help of their enthusiastic teachers Mrs Noble and Mrs Manning.

Although the term topic has only just started, the classrooms have lots of lovely dinosaur themed writing on display.  In Mrs Manning’s Year 1 classroom, a dinosaur museum has been set up, perhaps some of the measuring activities we suggested after our workshop might feature amongst the children’s exhibits.

A Dinosaur Museum

The Dinosaur Museum in the Classroom

The dinosaur museum in Class One.

Picture credit: All Saints’ Church of England Primary School/Everything Dinosaur

Children Study Dinosaurs

We noticed one of Everything Dinosaur’s inflatable dinosaurs on display in the dinosaur museum – it is an inflatable Stegosaurus!  As Mrs Manning confessed that her favourite dinosaur was another type of armoured dinosaur, an Ankylosaurus (pronounced an-KEE-loh-sore-us), the workshop format was altered slightly to allow the children to explore the size and scale of prehistoric animals using Ankylosaurus.  We were even able to compare our brains to the brain of this plant-eating, Late Cretaceous giant.

To learn more about the huge range of dinosaur toys we stock: Everything Dinosaur.

Gaining Confidence with Adjectives

When asked to describe the size of the huge ammonite fossil, the children came out with lots of fantastic adjectives, the ammonite was described as “colossal”, “gigantic”, “massive” and we even had “enormous” – all super adjectives that impressed the Everything Dinosaur expert who was leading the workshop.

Over the course of the morning the classes learned lots of amazing dinosaur facts, with the teachers taking many photographs, all of which could be used in the recounting and recall activities scheduled for the afternoon.

Marine Reptiles As Well

With the dedicated support of the teaching assistants the children had been sorting dinosaurs into herbivores and carnivores.  Reece had been colouring a drawing of a marine reptile, an Elasmosaurus (ee-las-mo-sore-us).  He confidently told our dinosaur expert that Elasmosaurus was a plesiosaur.

A Drawing of a Marine Reptile (Elasmosaurus)

Reece and his Elasmosaur drawing.

Picture credit: All Saints’ Church of England Primary School/Reece from Class One

Fossil Themed Workshop

For one of the extension resources, we challenged the children to have a go at designing their very own dinosaur.  Perhaps, some of the dinosaurs that the children create might have long necks like Elasmosaurus, or even flippers, that would be a very intriguing dinosaur indeed!  Could the children make a dinosaur model using modelling clay or perhaps building bricks?  If the children create their very own dinosaur, we would like to see lots of lovely adjectives used to describe their design, in addition, could they come up with a name to describe their prehistoric animal?

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