Digging for Dinosaurs: A finding and matching activity
Most kids are fascinated with dinosaurs at some stage of their childhood. Sometimes it’s a brief fascination and sometimes it lasts years. Of course, for a few lucky kids the fascination never leaves them and they follow their passion and become palaeontologists. Dinosaurs are really fascinating if you think about it. They existed in the world long ago but are not part of the world now. We know a bit about them from the evidence gathered by palaeontologists and that has provided us with some facts about dinosaurs. BUT we don’t know everything about them and that means we can use our imaginations to conjure up all kinds of theories about them. That’s the fascination. Play with dinosaurs and you combine fact and fiction!
We have created a short video to show a dinosaur find and match activity where kids can pretend to be palaeontologists. Our video can be watched by clicking here.
Let’s take a closer look at what is happening. We carefully hid the small toy dinosaurs in a tub of sand. We made sure that the dinosaurs were close to the surface and we invited our budding palaeontologists to find them. Hidden objects are exciting to find. Kids love it! They feel a great sense of achievement when they have found hidden objects. To them it’s a job done well!
Before starting, we discussed how palaeontologists dig up dinosaur bones. For most kids, they have a good stash of prior knowledge about the work of palaeontologists so be prepared to learn a fact or two from your budding palaeontologist! The idea of this play set up is to use the brushes gently to reveal the dinosaurs. Some kids might need a demonstration to show how this is done. Time to hand over the brushes for some dinosaur find fun!
For some kids, the biggest learning will be to maintain gentle control of the brushes and to be patient. Some kids will be able to do this easily and others will have to find out for themselves that using slow and gentle movements is best to find the dinosaurs. There will be some kids who can’t do that. All that means is that this isn’t the way that they want to play this game. That’s okay! Change up the game to something more action-packed like bury the dinosaurs and dig them out with a spade. What matters is the enjoyment of hiding and finding the dinosaurs. Your child might prefer to hide something different so don’t worry if the dinosaurs are replaced. The cars or shells or whatever it might be is just your child following their interest and that’s a good thing!
We have provided a free dinosaur printable set for you to use with the dinosaur dig set-up. The dinosaurs might be in your child’s dinosaur collection but if some aren’t then use dinosaur books as well. Have these close to the dinosaur dig set up so your child can match the found dinosaurs to the cards. This is a great early literacy experience for pre-readers and an opportunity to extend literacy learning for readers.
Finally, engage in conversations while playing dinosaur dig. You might be amazed to discover how much your child knows about dinosaurs. If they know more than you do then tell them. Use the opportunity to acknowledge them as experts and let yourself be the willing learner. Kids love to repeat over and over if they are really into something. So be prepared to stay a while if the dinosaur dig is a big hit!
