Dinosaur Excavation

Dig dig dig! Using sand, dirt, or even mud this sensory friendly activity will have your little one becoming their own archaeologist. You can use a variety of household items to make your Dinosaur excavation enticing. 

Suggestions of things to bury: Easter eggs, Plastic Dino or bone toys, pasta

Brushes, rocks, etc. For an extra challenge: try freezing objects in water/Easter eggs to create frozen fossils! 

Improve Fine Motor Skills

  • Sensory bins can increase hand strength as children stir, scoop, dig and pour.
  • You can include tweezers, spoons and funnels to encourage tool use and develop grasp patterns needed for handwriting and managing feeding utensils.

Read more about the importance of Building Fine Motor Skills in young people!

Dinosaur Freeze Dance

The dancing doesn’t stop here! Pull on some of your favorite tunes and make sure to dance like a Dino. When the music stops, freeze! A few Dino Dance move suggestions: 

  • Stomp your big Dino feet like a T-Rex
  • Flap your Pteranodon Wings
  • Tiny steps like a Micro-Raptor
  • Cha-Cha-Cha like a Triceratops 
  • Parasaurolophus Peek-a-boo Polka

This activity improves upon Focus and Concentration. For an extra challenge, you can ask your little dinosaur to perform dance moves in slow motion or sped up! Here are some helpful tips to help little ones refocus. 

Dinosaur Song Playlist

The Dinosaur Dance 

Hot Dinosaur Egg

  1. Similar to hot potato, First locate a ball to use as a “dinosaur egg”. 
  2. Next, play some fun Dino music from the playlists above. Play the music and pass around the egg until an adult pauses the music to freeze. 
  3. The person holding the dinosaur egg is responsible for covering the dinosaur egg from the rest of the group’s loud dinosaur “roars and stomps” similar to little egg during the show!

Imagining something is something else: Read more how Object Exploration builds language skills!

Fossil Pasta

Using playdough and a variety of pasta shapes, little archaeologists can make imprints of fossils of various texture/size. This skill also improves motor skills similar to the dinosaur excavation activity.

Don’t have pasta? Get creative!  Make playdough fossil prints of natural items like leaves, sticks, and foliage.

No Playdough?  Make your own!

Or use sand, dirt, or mud from the great outdoors!