Develop gross motor skills and children's imaginations with this T-Rex activity. Talk about the features of the tyrannosaurus -- large back legs and short front legs -- and discuss how children may think the dinosaur moved given these features. Encourage students to get up and move around as if they are a tyrannosaurus. Let their imaginations take over as they move about; they can even make facial features and noises that they think the tyrannosaurus would make. To turn this activity into a game, play music while children are moving about like these dinosaurs; upon stopping the music, children have to stop moving and if they don't, they have to sit out.
Use noodles to create replicas of tyrannosaurus fossils. Talk about the job of paleontologist and explain that it is because of their work that we know what we do about dinosaurs. Offer children clay and instruct them to use a rolling pin to flatten it out. Show children pictures of the tyrannosaurus and provide them with different types of uncooked pasta. Encourage them to use the pasta to create fossils by pushing the pasta into the clay. Prompt children to use the pictures of the tyrannosaurus as a reference for their pasta fossils.
This activity also encourages children to pretend that they are paleontologists, in addition to using their problem solving skills. Print out pictures of the tyrannosaurus and glue the images to pieces of cardboard. Use a craft knife to cut the images into puzzle pieces. Take apart the pieces of the dinosaur and invite children to reassemble them to create a tyrannosaurus.
Encourage children to use their imaginations and build literacy skills while producing illustrations that tell a story. After talking about the tyrannosaurus, ask children to think of what it would be like if we lived among the dinosaurs. Provide them with crayons, colored pencils and markers and invite them to draw pictures that illustrate what they think it would be like if the tyrannosaurus still lived today. After they've drawn their pictures, invite kids to share them with the class. Since children are telling a story through pictures and their spoken words, this activity builds literacy skills, as they learn that telling stories can express their thoughts.