DAY FOUR: Fun with Dinosaur Food
Welcome to our “Digging up Dinosaur Discoveries! An Amazing DIY Dinosaur at Home Camp Week” series. For Day 4 of our camp week, we focused on what dinosaurs ate, how they were classified, and their teeth. Read on for themed ideas on books, writing prompts, interactive games, crafts, snacks, and more!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 But the gist of our day having our kiddos focus on some work books or online learning tools in the early morning, an intro to the day’s theme after they were done, some videos around lunch time, and themed activities (reading time, writing time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments) in the afternoon. Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Most kids are likely familiar with the concept of ‘plant eating’ dinosaurs vs. ‘meat eating’ dinosaurs. If not, talk through meat and plant diets!
WHAT TO WATCH
For our intro of the day, we actually watched 2 short videos of herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore songs. (Note: the first one is actually not specifically about dinosaurs but does explain the eating categories). Both songs were quite catchy & the kids actually requested listening to them a few times…
- Herbivore, Carnivore, Omnivore Song
- Dinosaur Songs for Kids | Learning About Herbivores, Carnivores & Omnivores | Little BoBo Rhymes
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
During our themed snack of the day and our lunch, we talked through which foods herbivores might like and which carnivores would like….. We also had an ‘other’ section and imagined which dinosaurs would like cookies and sandwich bread 🙂
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (Online and Printable)
Superteacherworksheets.com has a free printable where kids can sort through 6 dinosaurs and can categorize them into a herbivore, carnivore chart: Dinosaur Worksheets. We printed this one out and let them color, cut, and categorize.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our dinosaur diet’s day, we picked a nonfiction book about herbivores. There is also a similar book about carnivores if you’re kiddo is more into the meat-eating dinosaurs 🙂
- My First Book about Herbivores by Dinosaur George Blasing
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: DINOSAUR, HERBIVORE, CARNIVORE, OMNIVORE
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you woke up and found a dinosaur in your house, what would you try to feed it? What do you think the herbivores would like? What about the carnivores?
STEM ACTIVITY
For our STEM activity of the day, we looked (online) at examples of different dinosaur teeth. We compared the differences between the herbivores and carnivores: sizes, shapes, etc.. Here are the extremely helpful links we referenced:
- Mainstreetsmiles.com: Teeth of 25 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Creatures. This is a dental office that provides some fun stuff. This EXTREMELY helpful graphic shows details of 25 dinosaurs: pictures of their teeth, shapes of their skulls, brief descriptions of teeth, etc. There’s also a downloadable pdf version of the image. Super helpful!
- Scholastic.com: What to Know About Dinosaur Teeth. This is a webpage with a few questions and answers on dinosaur teeth.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Summer Camps.
Happy Learning!
