The preschool kiddos at All About Children childcare center recently completed "Dinosaur Week" and learned a lot!

They started by discussing dinosaur basics - the difference between plant eaters and meat eaters, the difference in the length of their necks and shape of their teeth, their size, the fact that they are extinct (most of the kids didn't fully understand and said they "stink"!), etc.

Then, to give the kids a hands-on/visual demonstration of just how big dinosaurs were, they were given two lengths of string that had been cut to the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex (i.e. height and length) and were invited to stretch them out across the classroom/hallway.

To wrap up the day, the kiddos went on a fossil dig!

Materials

plastic tubs

oatmeal

sand

lentils

dinosaur skeletons

Fill the tubs with a mixture of oatmeal, sand, and lentils, hiding the dinosaur pieces within the mixture. You'll want enough tubs so that your students can work in groups of two or three.

Completing the Activity

Explain how important fossils are to our understanding of dinosaurs and, providing students with paint brushes, invite them to carefully sift through the material in order to unearth the fossils.

After the kiddos have unearthed the fossils, have them examine the pieces and observe how finding fossils is similar to finding the pieces of a puzzle.