Hands-On Activity Ideas for Prehistoric Play and Learning

Many children are fascinated by these ancient giants and with the right resources, this natural curiosity can be harnessed for engaging and meaningful learning experiences. By bringing prehistoric creatures to life through tactile play and investigation, children can develop key skills including observation, communication, problem-solving, and early mathematical concepts. Here’s how you can use Yellow Door’s dinosaur-themed resources to create exciting learning opportunities in your setting.

Budding palaeontologists will love digging for the stones in sand or soil – which is great for imaginative role play and developing investigative and fine motor skills. Dig and Discover Dinosaur Pack, Let’s Investigate Fossils, Dinosaur Bones Discovery Set and Let’s Investigate Prehistoric Teeth provide realistic artefacts for children to unearth and examine.

• Dig Site: Set up a sand or soil excavation area, hiding bones and fossils for children to discover using brushes, spades, and magnifying glasses.
• Oobleck Extraction
  - Mix cornflour, sand and water to create the base mixture
  - Whilst wet, add fossils, bones and prehistoric teeth
  - Finish with a sprinkling of sand before leaving to dry and set
  - Extract the dinosaurs from the dehydrated Oobleck
• Excavation Ice: Freeze fossils, skeletons or teeth in water and challenge children to experiment with ways to melt the ice and free them.
• Fossil Rocks: Make rocks that children can break open to find a dinosaur fossil inside!
  - Mix together equal parts of flour, salt, sand, coffee grounds and water to create a dough.
  - Cover the fossil or dinosaur piece and leave to dry.
  - Once dried, the children will have a cracking time breaking the ‘rocks’ open to discover a what’s hidden inside!

Dinosaur Bones Match and Measure Set and Activity Cards will instantly appeal to children’s instincts to explore, investigate, collect, compare, and measure.

Children can:

• Sort and Classify: Compare different bones and match them to corresponding cards.
• Measure and Order: Arrange bones by length, introducing concepts of shorter and longer.
• Compare Features: Identify differences in shape, size, and function – do the bones look like legs or skulls?

The bones increase in size by 2cm and can be used to introduce the concept and language of measurement, doubling, and halving.

Use the stones to build on children’s knowledge of dinosaurs and their world. Allowing the children to be the experts is empowering for them, and dinosaurs are a rich source of inspiration for role play:

• A Museum Exhibit: Use your dinosaur resources to create a dinosaur museum. Talk about what should go in the museum, such as model dinosaurs, information posters, photos and display signs to create an interactive dinosaur museum. Invite colleagues, family members and carers into your setting so that children can share their knowledge and expertise.
• Role Play: Provide hats, notepads, clipboards, and cameras for children to act as real palaeontologists documenting their discoveries.
• Make Impressions: To help children see the fine detail of the stones, encourage them to use the create fossil prints in playdough.
• Compare with Modern Animals: Show children pictures of animal teeth today—can they guess which prehistoric teeth belonged to herbivores or carnivores?

Small world play encourages storytelling and creativity. Use Dig and Discover Dinosaurs, Let’s Investigate Prehistoric Teeth, Let’s Investigate Fossils or Dinosaur Bones alongside natural materials such as rocks, sand, and plants to create immersive prehistoric landscapes.

Ideas for Small World Play:

• Dinosaur Swamp: Use water trays with slime and small plants to recreate a Jurassic environment.
  - For a more sensory experience, try using jelly or chai seeds and water to create a swamp base
• Volcano Eruption: Add a homemade ‘volcano’ (baking soda and vinegar) to bring science into small-world play.
• Habitats: create small world play habitats for dinosaurs using natural resources such as bark, dry leaves, stones, log slices.

• Create a dinosaur investigation table, including Let’s Roll Dinosaurs, dinosaur figures or Wooden Characters, plus other artefacts, such as Dinosaur Bones, Dig & Discover Dinosaurs, Fossils or Prehistoric Teeth.
• Encourage children to examine these closely and record what they see, provide magnifying glasses, clipboards and sorting trays, as well as a selection of books about dinosaurs.

Let’s Roll Dinosaurs allows you to build on children’s fascination with these prehistoric giants and encourage the development of fine motor skills, vital for early mark making and writing.

Creative Activities:

• Explore: Try using the rollers with different substrates, such as clay, kinetic sand, sand dough or cloud dough. This will encourage children to adapt their rolling technique, pressing harder when necessary and developing their motor skills.
• Match: Can children match the dinosaurs they’ve rolled with printed pictures, dinosaur figures or Dinosaur Wooden Characters?
• Storytelling Scenes: Join different children’s rolled scenes together to make a giant prehistoric story.

Pair hands-on activities with engaging dinosaur-themed books, such as:

• Book of Dinosaurs by Gabrielle Balkan and Sam Brewster
• Bone, Bones, Dinosaur Bones by Byron Barton
• Whose Dinosaur Bones Are Those? by Chihiro Takeuchi
• The Girl and the Dinosaur by Hollie Hughe
• Mary Anning by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara and Popy Matigot
• Prehistoric Actual Size by Steve Jenkins
• First Dinosaur Encyclopaedia published by Dorling Kindersley
• Tyrannosaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson

Triceratops:

• Same size as an African elephant
• Had one of the biggest animal skulls
• Constantly grew new teeth
• Length: 9m, weight: 6000kg
• Herbivore

Spinosaurus:

• Able to swim
• Its teeth were sharp and straight, not curved
• Length: 18m, weight: 4000kg
• Piscivore (ate fish)

Pliosaur:

• Not a dinosaur – a reptile that lived in the ocean
• Had large, sharp teeth and a strong bite
• Length: 8m, weight: 5000kg
• Piscivore (ate fish)

Stegosaurus:

• Had a brain the size of a chicken’s egg
• Used its spiked tail to defend itself
• Length: 9m, weight: 7000kg
• Herbivore

Tyrannosaurus rex:

• Had an amazing sense of smell
• Its bite was tremendously powerful – the strongest of any land animal that has ever lived
• The female Tyrannosaurus rex was bigger than the male
• Length: 13m, weight: 7000kg
• Carnivore

Ankylosaurus:

• Had a large club on its tail
• Had armour like a crocodile’s
• Length: 6m, weight: 4000kg
• Herbivore

Get talking – Useful Words

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