This idea comes from Preschool Rainbow, an educational website created by a 30-year early childhood educator. Create fossils using plaster of Paris and plastic dinosaurs. Press various parts of the dinosaurs into separate pieces of wet plaster of Paris, then remove them before the plaster completely hardens. You will be left with imprints of the dinosaurs that resemble fossils. Once the molds have dried, place them in a sand table or sandbox. Provide children with plastic shovels, siphons, small brushes to remove sand and magnifying glasses. Instruct the children to use the materials to dig through the sand and examine the fossils that you created.
Dramatic play is an important part of preschool. It allows children to be creative and experience different things through play acting. Create caves using sheets placed over chairs and tables; make mountains and trees out of cardboard and place them around the dramatic play area. Have the children pretend they are dinosaurs, crawling around the ground, making homes in caves and hunting for food.
Most children heartily enjoy this game. Hide a plastic dinosaur somewhere in your classroom. Set the children off to scour the room, hunting for the dinosaur. The first child to find the dinosaur gets to hide it for the next turn.
Sorting is a pre-math concept that children should begin to develop an understanding of in preschool. For this activity, you can use plastic dinosaurs or create your own dinosaur cut-outs in different colors and sizes. Have the children sort the dinosaurs based on different qualities, such as color, size, shape, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.
This activity teaches pre-reading skills. Purchase plastic eggs and pretend that they are dinosaur eggs. Inside each egg, place an upper-case and lower-case plastic letter. Provide each student with a worksheet covered in various dinosaur-related images, each beginning with one of the letters you put inside the eggs. Have the children open their eggs and decipher which pictures on the worksheet begin with the letters in their eggs. They then must place each letter over its matching item on the worksheet. This activity teaches letter-sound recognition.