Pupils at Ansdell Primary Study Dinosaurs

Children at Ansdell Primary in Lytham St Annes (Lancashire), learned about prehistoric animals with a dinosaur themed workshop from Everything Dinosaur.  The pupils in Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and a class of Year 3 were given the chance to get their hands on real fossils and to explore life in the past when a team member visited their school.

A special room had been set up by the dedicated and enthusiastic teaching staff, a space that was referred to as the “Explorers Area”, it was full of exciting and challenging dinosaur and fossil themed craft activities for the children to try.  Part of the wall had an enormous prehistoric landscape mural painted on it, including erupting volcanoes – what a stimulating learning environment for the eager, young palaeontologists!

A Dinosaur Themed Workshop

The Prehistoric Wall Mural in the “Explorers Area”

A colourful prehistoric landscape helps to inspire children.

Picture credit: Ansdell Primary/Everything Dinosaur

Many of the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 children helped to create the landscape painting, it is a very colourful wall mural and we think the huge volcano is brilliant.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Jurassic Arts and Crafts

The “Explorers Area” helps to reinforce learning with a focus on particular aspects of the term topic.  With the topic this term all about dinosaurs, a sand tray had been placed in the centre of the room and within the tray various plastic bones had been hidden.  Children were challenged to dig for the bones just like a palaeontologist and then they were asked to measure them and sort them in order of size.

This activity is a great way to get young children more confident with rulers and measuring cubes and helps them feel more comfortable when using numbers.  Art straws had been used to make a number of different dinosaur skeletons and some of the children had been sketching fossils using charcoal pencils.

Another group had been painting dinosaur themed pictures using stencils, this too, had led to the creation of a very colourful display.

Dinosaur Stencil Paintings on Display in the “Explorers Area”

The children created lots of colourful dinosaur stencil drawings.

Picture credit: Ansdell Primary/Everything Dinosaur

Design Your Own Dinosaur

As part of a number of extension activities set by Everything Dinosaur, the children were challenged to design their very own dinosaur.  As well as creating a prehistoric animal, the Everything Dinosaur team member asked the children to label various body parts, to consider how their dinosaur might survive in the Jurassic and what colour it might be.  The children were asked to think of a suitable name for their creation.  Some beautiful and very imaginative drawings were shown to our fossil expert over the course of the day.

 For further information on Everything Dinosaur’s outreach work: Contact Everything Dinosaur.