Dino Stomp

The Dino Stomp was our first big event of the summer.  What I loved about it is that it was planned almost entirely by Pinterest (gotta love Pinterest!).  Our program was for ages 3-6.  For us, programs with stations work best.  We will have out instructions and examples at each of the stations.  The librarian(s) in the room will refill the spaces as kids get up to leave.  Unfortunately, we have learned that we can't put out all of the supplies at one time or people will do multiples or take them home.  Here's what we did:

Station 1-Dino Macaroni
What screams dinosaur more than dinosaur bones (aka macaroni)?  We used the pattern and idea from Busy Bee Crafts.  

Each skeleton uses 19 macaroni noodles and there are approximately 323 noodles in 1 16 oz. box of penne (or enough to make 17 dinosaurs).  We used Elmer's School Glue Gel-it is the best stuff ever.  It doesn't run (no matter how much they dump on) and it dries clear.  It is hard to find.  I have so far only seen it at Office Depot and Discount School Supply.

Station 2-Dino Hats
I like to have some sort of hat to make, because the kids look cute.  Plus, then parents will take pictures and post them on social media, which ends up advertising the library.

We found the idea here, but made some adaptations to fit us.  To make your own dino hat, we took a piece of green posterboard and cut a 4 inch strip.  We used our 1 1/2 inch circle punch to make the white part of the eyes and our 1 inch circle punch to make the black part.  Our triangles are 3 inches wide and we cut them in red, orange, and yellow.  Each hat uses 3 triangles at the top and we let the kids pick out their own colors.  We used black washable markers to make the two dots for the nose.  Then we fit the green circle to the kids' heads and stapled it together.

Station 3-Dino Feet and 3-D Dinos
We put two crafts at this station because they both used crayons.  Our first project was a 3-D dinosaur.

When we were ordering our AccuCut dies for summer reading, we found this great 3-D dinosaur die.  We cut him out of cardstock and had the kids color him.  The pieces slide easily together.

We also made dinosaur feet.  I found the idea and pattern at Make and Takes.  We used green posterboard to precut all of the feet and the kids added their designs with crayons.  We had a lot end up with "painted" toenails.

Station 4-Dino Eggs
Did you know that you can make your own dino eggs?  We bought a bunch of plastic dinosaurs from Oriental Trading.  I found a recipe to make dino eggs at Projects for Preschoolers.  We quadrupled the recipe for 25 kids.  We mixed up a big bucket, set it up outside, and had the kids form the "eggs" around their dinosaurs.  What we learned is that you will want at least one person permanently running this station.  Quite a few of the kids (almost half) did not want to put their hands into the dirt mixture so we made their eggs for them.  We made our own stickers out of address labels telling the kids to let their dino egg dry and to break it open in a couple of days once dry.  We also listed the contents of our egg mixture as at least one kid tends to eat our projects and this way the parents wouldn't worry too much (plus, there are all kinds of allergies now).  We attached our stickers to plastic lunch bags and put the finished dino eggs inside the lunch bag so they were transportable and my boss didn't wonder why there were globs of mud all over the building. We also set up a dish tub filled with soapy water so the kids who did put their dinosaurs in the dirt mixture could wash their hand.

Wrap-Up
As always, we got a lot of compliments on the program.  There is nothing cooler than seeing the kids wearing their dino hats and feet while sitting in the children's room reading books.