Dinosaurs are always subject of fascination for all children. My two year is not exception. To be honest, I had completely different plan for our activity inspired by TinkerLab Creative Challenge.

But, as they often do, my child had her own ideas all along. I was delighted to follow her lead. She brought her dinosaur toy and a piece of blue cloth, laid the cloth on a table, and said: "Ocean". Then she leaned dinosaur over it pretending it was drinking. I could not take grin of my face it was so cute. I also was thrilled to see my two year old girl to project her learning (she loves everything to do with water), and create associations: ocean - blue - water - drinking.




I decided to extend her play and teach her a bit more about those magnificent creatures - show her that like some other animals, dinosaurs laid eggs. Together we created a sensory tray.

CAUTION: Since we played together and she was under my supervision I felt it would be safe to place small parts in our sensory tray. Children under three should not be allowed to play with small parts on their own ( it is a choking hazard).


We filled our Dinosaur Sensory Tray with object that represented colours of the Earth:

• Plastic Eggs
• Dry leaves - our main fillers. They crunched up so well and felt great to crush in hand 
• Loose parts to create representation of a lake
• Pebbles
• Blue and green clothes
• Dinosaurs
• Plastic palm trees
• Tiny rubber insects

First I let her play with it, feel, touch, smell,..taste. ;) After that we talked about dinosaurs and their eggs.

Things we learnt:

• dinosaurs laid eggs and mummy dinosaurs also fearlessly  protected their precious eggs.
• dry leaves are fun to touch, feel rough in hand, sound crunchy.
• some dinosaurs used their long neck to reach leaves from trees.

A great addition to this topic are  Montessori Oviparous and Viviparous Animals Sorting Printables
which you can download for free from Montessori Nature TpT Store.


Here are great companion books (affiliate links):

Animal Eggs: An Amazing Clutch of Mysteries and Marvels