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This page describes some of our favorite dinosaur-related activities.
 | Dinosaur fantasy play |
| Dinosaurs in "mud" |
| Dinosaur volcanoes |
| Digging dinosaurs |
| Dinosaur baths |
| Dinosaurs at bedtime |
Sometimes I think that if all we did was play with dinosaurs, that would be enough.
|
Shortly after Ethan turned two, we visited a temporary exhibit called Dinosaur Families at the Field Museum in Chicago. Ethan was both amazed and a bit frightened by the first thing we saw: a life-sized mechanical Maiasaura dinosaur caring for a nest full of babies. As we left the exhibit, we bought a plastic Maiasaura and nest. After we got home, while I was unpacking the diaper bag, Ethan went over to a potted plant, pulled off a leaf, tore it into pieces, and fed it to the baby maiasaurs. Feeding and caring for plastic dinosaurs became one of Ethan's favorite activities during the first stage of his passion for dinosaurs |
During the first year of his passion for dinosaurs, Ethan developed three distinctly different styles of play:
| Playing with toy dinosaurs. By far, this was Ethan's favorite
activity. His dinosaurs played together on his bedroom floor, on the
living room couch, and our front yard. On our walks, Ethan collected
leaves and sticks which he piled on the sidewalk, one pile on our front walk
and a second by the back steps. He arranged his larger plant eaters
around the piles, where they fed contend quietly. Indoors his
dinosaurs had to be content with plastic people food from our kiddy
kitchen. Ethan's dinosaurs conversed and cared for each other -- and
they sometimes mated -- but they rarely fought or ate each other. |
| Pretending to see dinosaurs around the neighborhood.
This was inspired by the book and video versions of Patrick's Dinosaurs
and was mostly a game he played with Dad and Mom. Ethan liked to "see"
dinosaurs out the back window, on our walks, or munching on plants in the Oak
Park Conservatory. "That's not a
light post, it's a Brachiosaurus neck!" |
| Pretending to be a dinosaur, and that other people were dinosaurs, too. Two-year-old Ethan didn't spend much time pretending that people were dinosaurs. Sometimes Daddy was a T. rex, with two fingers on each hand as dangling claws. Ethan the Triceratops would run away, then charge back and knock Daddy to the ground. But that was not a very common past time. The idea that people could transform into dinosaurs might have seemed a very scary idea to his two-year-old mind. (However, by age five, dinosaur fights had become one of Ethan's favorite games.) |
As I see it, my role in all this is to provide a few props (and a willing actor) to help support Ethan's rich fantasy play.
Perhaps inspired by the Land Before Time video
series,
Ethan's dinosaurs have spent a lot of time stuck in the "mud"
over the years.
 Ethan making dinosaur footprints in green slime (also known as "green bubbly water"). |
We usually make
the "mud" ourselves, rather than importing real mud from the
outdoors. Here are links to our two favorite kinds of
"mud" for dinosaur play:
Play Dough. This wonderful stuff can be
used over and over, as mud or rock or almost anything else. Here's
a Web site with a bunch of play dough recipes: Slime. Slime is a bit more complex to
make, and it isn't appropriate for kids who still put things in their
mouths. Here are a couple of Web pages with recipes. (The
first site explains some of the science behind slime): |
Once you've made some slime, you can make a quick volcano
by draping a pancake of slime over the narrow end of an upside-
down plastic funnel. Watch it slowly flow down the sides,
swallowing anything in its path.
 Dinosaurs threatened by a "slime" volcano. |
If you don't mind
a bit of mess, Our Neighborhood Rocks Web site has two other ways
to make volcanoes using baking soda and vinegar. To see more, go
here: < http://www.saltthesandbox.org/rocks/playvolcano.htm > |
Although Ethan bought a few small pieces of real
dinosaur
bone in his fossil collection, they are much too valuable to
play with. So, when we want to play paleontologist and dig
for fossil bones, we do one of three things:
| We bury chicken or turkey bones in the sandbox. First we clean the bones by boiling them for a long time and scraping off the leftover meat; then we scrub them in hot soapy water; and then we dry them someplace where our cats can't get them. |
| We bury non-dinosaur fossils in "mock rock."
Our non-dinosaur fossils are often broken bits of fossil bone from the Venice Beach area in Florida, but you could also use clean-and-dry chicken bones. To find out how we make "mock rock," go here: < http://www.saltthesandbox.org/rocks/mockrock.htm > |
| We go to a museum with a dinosaur dig. The pictures below were taken at an indoor dinosaur dig at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Lots of museums have dinosaur digs these days. Scroll down this page to see a partial list of museums with permanent dinosaur digs for kids, with links to their Web sites. |
Ethan excavating dinosaurs at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis.
(May, 1999)
The Children's Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana
< http://www.childrensmuseum.org/index.htm
>
Their current dinosaur dig is in the "What If...?"
exhibit on the first floor:
< http://www.childrensmuseum.org/themuseum/whatif.htm
>
They are working on an even bigger dinosaur exhibit to open in 2004:
< http://www.childrensmuseum.org/dinosphere/index.htm
>
The Chicago Children's Museum, Chicago, Illinois
< http://www.chichildrensmuseum.org/
>
Here's the link to their "Dinosaur Expedition" exhibit:
< http://www.chichildrensmuseum.org/exhibit_details.cfm?exhibit_id=16
>
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth,
Texas
< http://www.fwmuseum.org/
>
They have a wonderful outdoor fossil dig:
< http://www.fwmuseum.org/dino.html
>
You can even see a LiveCam view of the dig!
The Madison Children's Museum, Madison, Wisconsin
< http://www.madisonchildrensmuseum.com/
>
Here's a link to their "Dig Into Dinosaurs" exhibit,
which
includes a fossil dig:
< http://www.kidskiosk.org/exhibits/dino.html
>
The Orpheum Children's Science Museum, Champaign, Illinois
< http://www.m-crossroads.org/orpheum/
>
They have an outside dinosaur dig, described on this page:
< http://www.m-crossroads.org/orpheum/exhibit.htm
>
The Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
< http://www.acnatsci.org/
>
Here's a link to their "Big Dig":
< http://www.acnatsci.org/museum/dinohall/bigdig.html
>
The Utah Museum of Natural History, Salt Lake City, Utah
< http://www.umnh.utah.edu/index.html
>
Their "Quinney Dinosaur Discovery Hall" includes
quarry
where you can dig for simulated Allosaurus bones:
< http://www.umnh.utah.edu/tier1/exhibits/quinneyhall.html
>
Many museums set up temporary dinosaur digs for special
programs
or for temporary exhibits. Why not contact a natural history,
science,
or children's museum near you to see what they have planned for the
coming year?
Even though true dinosaurs lived on land, toy plastic
dinosaurs and water seem to be made for each other!
|
|
Starting at age two and a half, Ethan loaded the bathtub with dinosaurs before every bath. He had so much fun that we eventually found other ways to mix dinosaurs and water. When Ethan was three, we sometimes survived the long winter days by:
Was it messy? Of course! But kids need to
play with water, even in winter, and this was a great way to do it. |
When Ethan was younger, we told him dinosaur stories at bedtime, making them up as we went along. That's not as hard as it seems, because Ethan insisted we retell each story at least 100 times.
In Mommy's stories, Ethan and his friends visited Dinosaur Forest to meet the friendly dinosaurs and Ethan often saved the day when a hungry meat-eater attacked. In Daddy's stories, Ethan and his friends became friendly dinosaurs by drinking small bottles of dinosaur juice purchased at the teacher store.
These days, if we try to tell 7-year-old Ethan a bedtime story, he takes over after the first few lines. He winds up telling the story that he wants to hear (which sometimes puts us to sleep).
Want
to tell a dinosaur bedtime story to your child? Here's some advice from a
professional storyteller:
< http://oddsbodkin.com/articles/Forest_Floor_Theory.html
>
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Copyright 2002-2003 Eric D. Gyllenhaal
Webmaster@SaltTheSandbox.org
Ethan's Dinosaurs is part of the Salt the Sandbox Web.
For more information visit the Salt the
Sandbox home page.
This page was created on August 17, 2002, and it was last updated on March 31, 2003.
