Dinosaur Dance!

The Plan

Books

Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein
Dinosaur Vs. the Library! by Bob Shea
RAWR! By Todd Doodler

Games

Game: “Steg, Steg, T-Rex”
Yep. This is Duck, Duck, Goose. It’s a tried and true game for preschoolers that always leads to lots and lots of giggling.

Game: “Dino Egg Hunt”
We have a ton of leftover eggs from various crafts. I hid ten of each color (pink, blue, green, and purple) and broke the kids into four teams, giving them each a color bucket that corresponded to the egg colors. I asked them to only take their color eggs so that everyone could participate. When their team finished, I awarded them their own dinosaur finger puppets that I got at Target earlier in the summer.

And then, it was time to DANCE!

Dance Mix

We Are the Dinosaurs (Laurie Berkner)
Dinosaur Dance (We Kids Rock)
Dino-5 Theme Song (Baby Loves Hip Hop Presents The Dino5)
Dinosaurs A to Z (Dinosaur Train)
I Am a Palentologist (They Might Be Giants)

For “We Are the Dinosaurs” and “Dinosaur Dance”, the kids, grown-ups, and I followed the directions in the songs. During the the “Dino-5 Theme Song”, I had the kids dance their finger puppets around. The finger puppets really helped them take a break instead of going full-force. During “Dinosaurs A to Z”, some of the kids joined me in shouting out the letters with me as I tried to make the letter shapes with my body. And for “I Am a Palentologist”, I had scarves for them to dance around with as our final cool-down.

Craft

And as (almost) always, we did finish with a craft. This was another quick Oriental Trading scratch art kit. The kids enjoyed it, but I did find that a lot of them ran out of time to scratch ALL the color off. (As so many of them try to do!)

How It Went

I had a ridiculous amount of fun at this program and I’m so happy to report that the kids did too. They busted some great moves and had a lot of good times in the air conditioning. I also had a giant blow-up TRex that I got for summer decorations. Afterwards, the kids who wanted photos took photos by him giving me some wonderful photographic memories of this day!