Dinosaur Love : Play Round-up

Her Ninsie Tracy recently gave Ladybug Girl the most adorable dinosaur from a handmade-art fair in Singapore.  "Stompy" is her new favorite playmate and bedmate.

Isn't it cute?

Ladybug Girl has loved dinosaurs (and the color purple) since she was three years old.  So in honor of her new pal, Stompy : I've rounded up our play time that followed this interest.

First, we started with books:

This book started it all.  It's great because it's not a fake-cartoony book but it doesn't kill you with detail.  

Then we made it real:

I tucked these photos in the book, and she loves looking at them and identifying the dinosaur over and over again.   She gets a kick out of seeing mommy and daddy with real fossils.
(But she also keeps asking where she was.)

We've gone to the Mind Museum six times since it opened because of this guy here.  Never gets old.

We were lucky to catch this show during a Singapore visit.

And now we play!  Of course we had to make fossils of our own...

... and so we made some last Halloween.
These were plastic bugs in "amber" : clear gelatin with some yellow food color added.

She was very bothered though, because she didn't want the ladybug to be trapped.

We have a bag of expired coffee from two Christmases ago (yes, believe it), so I googled one day and found a super-easy recipe for making fossil impressions.  We've now done this a couple of times.

Coffee + Flour + Salt + Water

Press or roll out flat.

Punch out some circles

Make impressions.  You can poke a hole with a straw before they dry to turn them into ornaments.

Let them dry 1.5 days.    

I loved this one.  (This was a happy meal toy)

The day after we got Stompy, she brought out her dinosaur figures and drew a habitat for them.  

She didn't want Stompy to be lonely.

I love it when Awesome Guy joins in.

But his "habitat" was a spaceship:

And his dinosaurs were the Transformers Dino-bots: "Sludge.  Snarl.  Slag.  Swoop. Grimlock."

(I am very glad I have a daughter I can relate to.  Big applause for moms with sons!)

Here's our prehistoric habitat.  Ladybug Girl drew the asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs.  Can you spot it?

We also loved singing along to "Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs".

Then we sewed with a real needle and thread for the first time,

because of a particularly vigorous stomping session while racing cars and dinosaurs.

  

Stompy is well-loved.  Thanks Ninsie Tracy!

I must admit I've fallen in love with dinosaurs myself now.  How have you followed your child's interests?  My sister is learning the abacus for my math-genius nephew.  

Math!

Now that's love.