Quick Dinosaur Morning Basket for Toddlers

Do you know the Look? This particular look I am referring to is the look of a toddler being sucked into the TV. The shoulders slouch forward. The back is slightly arched. The mouth is hanging wide open, and the unblinking eyes are glued to the screen. I don’t know when the habit of turning on the TV during breakfast happened. I feel like it was a black hole that sucked us in. It wasn’t a good feeling. I have been trying to get away from the TV for a while now but between the tight schedules, the meltdowns, and the tantrums, it was just easier. This weekend I implemented a plan to hopefully pull Evie away from the TV and towards something more enrichening: a dinosaur morning basket.

What I included in our Dinosaur Morning Basket?

Evie is currently obsessed with Dinosaurs, so naturally it was an easy theme for me to choose. If she is going to be pulled away from the TV and its seemingly magnetic quality, it has to be draw her in like a moth to a flame. I want to include a wide variety of activities for Evie to do during our mornings. Sticking to the major components of a lesson plan, I like to include an item for each category: Language and Literacy, Math, Creative Arts, Science, and Physical Education. This ensure that she is practicing critical skills for her age.

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Dino Feet

Warning! This activity took a little bit of prepping and a more than a little cutting. However, as I nursed my sore, cramping hands (yes, I’m being a little dramatic), I knew it was all worth it when Evie pulled out the Dino Feet and proceeded to ask me what each letter was. At this point, she is naturally curious about letters, so this activity works out well. Every time she sees a letter she will say ‘letter’ and look at me expectantly while waiting for me to tell her the letter. We also placed them on the ground, and she used them as stepping stones. Every time she landed on a letter, I would tell her the letter and she would repeat the letter. This is great letter recognition practice! For your 3’s and 4’s, when you identify a letter practice the sound each letter makes for that added phonological awareness element.

This is the template I used for the dinosaur feet shapes.

Dinosaur Sorting/ Patterns

I have mentioned this before in my prewriting post, but I’m going to say it again. I absolutely love these sorting dinosaurs. In addition to practicing her color sorting, we work on counting and patterns as well. Starting with one color, we count all the dinosaurs we find in that color, then we move onto the next color! At this stage, Evie hasn’t grasped the concept of patterns, but you have to start somewhere! After we separate the dinosaurs into their colored bowls, we would take two different colored dinosaurs and practice and ABAB pattern. If your child is obsessed with dinosaurs like mine, I highly recommend these sorting dinosaurs. Counting and pattern recognition are two key elements in math readiness. For your 3’s and 4’s, introduce the concepts of more and less. Stick 3 dinosaurs in a bowl and 5 dinosaurs in a bowl and ask which bowl has more dinosaurs. This is great practice for one-on-one counting and measuring quantities.

Dinosaur Tracks

This activity took a little more prep but nothing outrageous! Using a piece of cardstock, I freehanded a couple dinosaur feet shapes, glued them to a toilet paper tube, pulled out some of Evie’s favorite colors of paint and let her stamp away. Evie identifies the colors that we use, and as we are painting, we tend to mix the colors and create new colors while painting on her art easel. This time we used red and blue and ended up with some purple tracks! During this activity we work on intentionally creating art, did the dinosaurs walk somewhere? Is she just stamping because there is a place open? Did she have a preference on color and the placement of the color? This is a great activity to practice fine motor skills.

Fossils

The fossil activity was so much fun! I encourage you to get creative with your ‘fossils’. Evie and I created shape fossils, an Evie-saurus fossil, and some dinosaur toy fossils with air-dry clay. You can even jazz it up and create an entire experience with different materials! I go into more detail about this activity in an earlier post!

Dinosaur Morning Basket Bonuses

Evie has an interest in books. I know there are a million things that could be worse than a book obsession. Instead of a toy rotation, I have a book rotation. Half of the time she does even know the books that she has. I pulled out a book “How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten?”. For this theme I highly recommend any “How Do Dinosaurs…” books, they are funny and wonderfully written. When I have a book that goes with the theme of the basket, I am absolutely going to include it. I love this book because it is a fun way to help children with number sense and rote counting.

Evie has larger dinosaur toys. I added these to her basket to give her something to have more free play options. In the end, we ended up grabbing her blocks and stomping the dinosaurs on the ‘rocks’ as they chased each other and roared at each other. Mainly she just roared at me though.

Dinosaur Morning Basket Summary

These activities were so much fun to do with Evie and she LOVED having the dinosaur basket ready to go when she woke up in the morning. The best part: the TV stayed off! There are some activities that she can do independently, such as the dinosaur figurines, the sorting dinosaurs, and the dinosaur dance. Other activities such as the book, the Dino feet and dinosaur tracks required a little more of my attention. By presenting Evie with this basket of dinosaur goodies, she gravitated towards the items she could play with independently first, which gave me time to drink my coffee. It only took me two and a half years to figure out how to be able to drink my coffee while it was still hot. Overall, we spent two and half hours going through all of the items in the basket. This worked out perfectly because Daddy had finally woken up and we were ready to go run errands for the day.

Let me know what you think! I love hearing from everyone. Thank you so much for reading!