Preschool Day Dinosaur Theme

I love doing themed learning/ therapy activities with my kiddos. It makes it fun for them, motivates me to do the therapy, and it keeps it interesting. I try to hit lots of different areas so we work on speech, OT, pre-academics, have fun, learn new games, etc. This is what we did today for dinosaur day!

For reading, we read Dinosaurs (a non-fiction book about dinosaurs), Danny and the Dinosaur, That’s Not My Dinosaur, DInorella, and part of the first Magic Tree House book Dinosaurs Before Dark. One of the things I am really big on is reading to the kids at least 30 minutes every day. We also sang “Defenseless Dinosaur” and “Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs” that are on a CD we have because we are old school like that. We did dance freeze to the dinosaur songs and the kids LOVED that! It really burned some calories too- we danced for about half an hour.

For pre-academics, I put down foam letters on the floor, and the kids had to pull their arms in and curve two fingers, then stomp around like a T-Rex (my little guy’s favorite dinosaur) and name the letters that we stomp on. We pulled out our plastic dinosaurs for counting, and counted how many dinos we had, how many plates on Stegosaurus’ back, how many spikes on the tail, which dinosaur has 2 legs? 4 legs? Which has fewest legs, etc.

I saw some awesome dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets that I wanted to serve for snack, but my kiddos are GFCF, so we ate “dinosaur eggs” and used a T-Rex cookie cutter to shape our sandwiches. We didn’t get to our science experiment today- chipping dinosaurs out of ice blocks with little hammers and putting others into hot water. We may do it tomorrow because it is just fun!

For colors and shapes, we drew dinosaur eggs in circle and oval shapes, then decorated them in different colors, and I had the kids tell me if they thought it was a boy or girl dinosaur on the inside, and name the shape. For art, we put dinosaur stickers on paper, and the kids came up with stories to draw. I couldn’t fully understand what Chelsea was telling me about her picture, but she was signing about how a dinosaur was happy and there was an egg.

Our game today was Memory. The kids got a dinosaur matching game from their friend for Christmas, so it was the perfect day to break it in! The kids did awesome, and it is wonderful to see Chelsea trying to remember where things are. She sometimes will start to get upset if she doesn’t get a match right away, so we are practicing saying “We get what we get and we don’t throw a fit!”

For OT, we did wheelbarrow races! This is actually an awesome activity to lead up to writing, and here is why. Most people think that to teach a child to write, you give them a pencil and paper and have them practice. But actually, writing begins with core stabilization, then shoulder stabilization, then elbow, wrist, and only then does the hand come in. If you watch a little kid scribble, it is a whole body activity! Strengthening their core and shoulders must come before writing, or else there will be more struggles later on. I learned this from the 2014 national apraxia conference in Nashville at a fine motor lecture.

For receptive language, we had a picture sequence story that we had to piece together. First a dinosaur is hungry, looks for food, eats plants, then is happy. Easy enough for us, but Chelsea really struggles with sequencing, so we practice a lot!

Lastly, I had the kids come up with their own dinosaur game while I cooked dinner. I want them to be practicing social skills- mostly Chelsea playing cooperatively with peers, and be creative on their own. The came up with a cute game where they would hide the dinosaurs, then be in a “cave” then go on a treasure hunt to find the dinosaurs. They played over and over and were laughing the whole time.