Dinosaur-Themed Journal Activities for Preschoolers
Each week this summer we have been enjoying a book-based play theme. We’ve been following a summer reading program that my good friend Alison put together for her kiddos. It’s been so fun to create themed journal pages each week to coordinate and I’ve loved sharing them here! You can find the rest of our themed journal posts here:
4th of July-Themed Journal Activities
Zoo-Themed Journal Activities
Ocean-Themed Journal Activities
Watermelon-Themed Journal Activities
This past week we’ve been having lots of fun with dinosaurs! I will first share the dinosaur-themed books we’ve been enjoying with our activities, and then I’ll share the journal pages. We own and love all of the following books, but always check your local library first before buying!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links which means I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase through those links. All opinions are my own, and I only link to products that I truly recommend.
- Clever Creatures and Boundless Beasts (this book comes with dinosaur figures that we used for several of our themed activities!)
- Dinosaurs (this is a non-fiction book we found in the Target dollar section!)
- Dinosaurumpus
- How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
- How Do Dinosaurs Say I’m Mad?
- Never Touch a Dinosaur
- No, No Dinos!
This journal page was SO EASY to set up and was ready in just a couple of minutes. I wrote a bunch of lowercase d’s around the page, and then filled the rest of the page with the letters that often get confused with “d” such as “b,” “p,” and “a.” We scored these sweet little mini dino erasers from the Target dollar section and used them like crazy for this theme. If you can’t make it out to Target, I found these for you which are equally as cute! I had Kade (4) find and cover all the lowercase d’s he could find.
Because I chose to use tricky letters, we had to talk quite a bit first about how the lowercase “d” is the one that has the circle (or as I like to call it, the “donut”) FIRST, and then the “stick.” As he was looking at each letter I helped him think out loud by saying things like “Look at the letter- do you see a donut first, and then a tall stick? That’s a “d!” - After the first couple, he had more of an idea of what he was looking for and how to distinguish between the different letters.
Here is another activity with a super easy set-up! I chose to focus on letter sounds for this activity but you could put any skill inside those dino footprints- numbers, shapes, make them different colors, write in sight words, names, etc. We used a little dinosaur figure and as I called out a letter, Kade (4) would find the letter, “stomp” his dinosaur on the letter, and tell me the sound the letter makes. I also tried just saying the sound and having him find and name the letter. I made sure to have him stomp around to each letter and either name it or tell me the sound.
This set-up took a little longer because I had to bust out a ruler to make sure all my boxes were the same size. ;) We have a set of mini, plastic dinosaurs (similar) that I snagged also in the Target dollar section I think last year but they have come in handy for this play theme! The ones I linked to would not work for this pattern practice activity as they are all different colors, but these mini erasers I linked to earlier would be PERFECT! The dinosaurs we have are green, orange, and blue so I used those three colors to create three different patterns for Kade (4) to complete.
We’ve worked on patterns quite a bit but have never really labeled them with letters. I wanted to introduce him to this concept so I wrote the letters in each box as well. We talked about how each letter represents a different colored dinosaur. When he completed each pattern, we went back and practiced saying the patterns each once with colors, and once with letters.
These last two journal activities both focus on pre-writing skills/fine motor skills. This one had Kade (4) tracing an uppercase “D” to draw the dinosaur’s body, and then tracing over the dino’s spikes. The slanted lines help familiarize with strokes needed to write an uppercase “A,” “V",” or “W.”
Pencil grip is an area that is a bit challenging for Kade still. For these pre-writing journal activities, I had him hold a mini eraser (you could use any small object- a pom pom, a dice, whatever you have handy) in his dominant hand using only his pinky finger and ring finger. The three remaining fingers (thumb, pointer, and middle) are the ones I encouraged him to hold the marker with. When we were done he said, “Thanks mom, for showing me that tip!” His grip still wasn’t perfect and it was different than what he is most comfortable with (probably a fist still, honestly), but I could tell he liked having a little bit more clear direction on a proper grip.
Our final activity covers pre-writing/fine motor skills but also early counting skills. I had Kade just draw straight lines coming out of each dinosaur’s back to show the correct number for each one. This allowed him the opportunity to identify each number first, and then work on counting to a given number as he drew each line. We did the same pencil grip “trick” for this activity as I mentioned in the last one, where I had him hold a small object with 2 of his fingers, and grip the utensil with the other 3.
Check out the post with all the rest of our dinosaur-themed activities, and check out our other themed activity posts below:
4th of July Activities
Zoo Activities
Ocean Activities
Watermelon Activities
Bug Activities
Frog Activities
Apple Activities
If you liked this post, be sure to pin it to your Pinterest, and if you try any of these activities out make sure you tag us so we can see- it makes our day!