Dinosaur Day

So last week we had a Space Day, and this week it was Dinosaur Day! As before, I set up the kitchen table. I don't have a photo unfortunately, but I used an upturned bowl with a cup on top as the basis for a volcano which was covered in a dark red shawl with some of Ram's pink and red ties coming out of the top to represent lava. Then I set up all our plastic dinosaurs around the base. It was rather good, if I say so myself.

We began Dinosaur Day with another poster making activity as this was so popular last time. The children painted a large piece of paper in different shades of green and yellow, then Harry coloured in some printable dinosaur colouring sheets (free download), again from the fantastic Twinkl. I told him that no-one really knows what colour dinosaurs were, although we can make a good guess, so he took me at my word and produced some fantastically bright dinosaurs. He cut them out and we stuck them on with a name label.

It wouldn't be a themed day without a special cake to celebrate, so we made a huge dinosaur cake. It came from a recipe in a cookery book that I had when I was little. The book is out of print now, but the photograph below shows how you can cut a circular cake into a dinosaur shape. It wasn't quite as easy as it looks and I did have to improvise a bit, but I think we made a passable dinosaur.

We iced him and decorated with smarties and chocolate drops. The original dinosaur in the book has marzipan spikes too but I didn't have anything to improvise with.

Then we made some salt dough dinosaur fossils. I used my standard salt dough recipe - 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt and 1 cup water - and we rolled out some rough circles. Then we pressed in plastic dinosaurs, shells and stones to make imprints. The 'fossils' were baked in the oven for about half an hour then left out for a few days to air dry. I'll be hiding them in the sand pit for the children to excavate! You can find full instructions for the dinosaur fossils here.

We finished with some dinosaur pencil control worksheets (Twinkl subscriber resource). Harry really likes pencil control activities at the moment so I'm doing everything that I can to encourage him in preparation for starting school.

Another dinosaur activity that would have fitted in well is a sensory tub like our Dinosaur Island which Harry had a lot of fun with.

Again, we had a huge amount of fun with our themed dinosaur day.

If you feel inspired, here you can find the posts about our other themed days:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Under the Sea Day
Transport Day
Australia Day
Roman Day
Disney Frozen Day Beach Day

And some tips on how to hold a themed day at home for children.