You and your child can pretend you are paleontologists with this dinosaur activity. If you don't have a sandbox, fill a sand and water table, or any large container with sand. Hide small plastic dinosaur toys in the sand. Talk to your child about what paleontologists are and explain to her that you are going to dig for dinosaurs in the sand-filled vessel. Provide her with a shovel, a bucket, a hand-held rack, a magnifying glass and any other tools you think would be useful for this activity. Dig through the sand together to look for the buried dinosaurs. After the dinosaurs are found, analyze them and ask your child if she can name the types that were found.
Create recreations of dinosaur skeletons from dried macaroni. Talk to your child about how the dinosaur bones that have been found are reassembled and placed in museums so you can study and learn from them. Show your child pictures of these bones, or take him to a museum to see them first-hand. Crush up pieces of dried macaroni and set them into bowls. Print out images of dinosaurs and help your child glue the broken pieces of macaroni onto the dinosaurs, creating the look of bones.
You and your child can pretend to be dinosaurs. Talk about the different types of dinosaurs and discuss what they looked like, what they ate and how they lived. Ask your child to demonstrate how she thinks different types of dinosaurs moved and move along with her. For example, you may stomp and roar for a tyrannosaurs rex, for a brontosaurus you may walk slowly on all fours and for a pterodactyl, you may flap your arms like wings. This activity expands imagination and promotes gross motor skill development.
Talk with your child about how new discoveries are made all the time and one day, paleontologists could find a new type of dinosaur that has never before been discovered. Encourage your child to pretend that he is a paleontologist that discovered a new species of dinosaur. Provide him with paper, crayons and markers and prompt him to draw a picture to illustrate the dinosaur that he discovered. Have him name the dinosaur and ask him to describe its characteristics.