{Dino Day}

I had a couple days where I wanted Jaxson to be in more of a social setting, so we invited some cousins over to share the fun and learning. Our day started with each kid becoming a dinosaur of course. Because you can’t have a dino day without being a dinosaur. Find the free mask printouts here.

Our day started off with dinosaur eggs! I gave each tot a paintbrush and some hot water and we melted the dinosaur eggs till we found all the babies inside! Seriously this was a hit. We had a mixture of art and discovery and each one of them loved it. You can find a tutorial here. Basically just stuff some balloons with plastic dinosaurs, add water and food coloring, and freeze! Then pull off the balloon. So much fun. We got our plastic dinosaurs from Hobby Lobby, but be sure to check out Amazon as well!

These sensory tubs are my favorite. If you’re so inclined, get a couple and put some different types of materials in them. They are such a good time and hours of fun. This tub is filled with cloud dough from the dollar tree. It’s like a play do sand and it’s so much fun, and relatively mess free, or at least easy to vacuum up! I buried some “dinosaur bones” and the kiddos worked at digging up the fossils. Here is the awesome tutorial we used, and they’re super simple to make! We also included a couple “fossils” with dino footprints on them. They had a great time, and after we found all the bones, they continued to play and build in the sand. This sand lasted about 3 months until we took it outside and it ended up all over the yard. But covered, it probably would have saved for a really long time. This sand was specifically from the 99 cent store.

I made some dinosaur eggs ahead of time with dinosaurs inside and the kids had fun discovering the eggs inside and making their own eggs. Can’t go wrong with play dough! Coming from the dry crusted play dough remains flattened into my rug when Jaxson thought it would make a fun road for his cars.

We finished off with some story books. As you will see I’m an Usborne-aholic. Yes, I attend weekly meetings for my addiction. Haha. Seriously these books are so great, and they have so many resources for toddler learning, with or without homeschooling. This book has huge (and durable) fold out pages and tells you so much about dinosaurs and is fun for the kids to see the giant pages. Usbore has a great selection of “my big book of” and you’ll see them from time to time as they contribute to our learning. And our dino pop up book can be found here. Mr. Trex has been known to chow down on cars and chase naughty toddlers around the house. Unfortunately he no longer has the jaws to eat anything any longer. Gracie found him one morning and made him bite proof by ripping out his mouth. Toddlers and pop ups, am I right?

Dinosaur day was a hit and huge success. It came at a perfect time as Jaxson had a monthly obsession of dinosaurs and he retained so much of what he learned that day. Plus having cousins over was such a fun time. I love watching them all learn from each other.