Dinosaur Themed Preschool Craft Idea: Shape-a-saurus

We're studying dinosaurs this month and doing some fun crafts to go along with our theme. The boys had fun making a Shape-a-saurus three different ways. The different ways to make a shape-a-saurus change how open ended the project is and the difficulty level of this project. You can print out your own stegosaurus and correspond shape from my free dinosaur printables available here.

Preschool (or Tot-school) Craft Idea: Shape-a-saurus

• Shapes cut out of construction paper, paper the child has already colored on, or a shape dinosaur print out printed on colored paper or on plain paper and then colored in
• A piece of paper, dinosaur coloring page, or shape dinosaur print out
• School glue (homemade works great!) or glue sticks
• Q-tips to spread the glue if desired

1. Assemble supplies.
2. For a completely open-ended, and the easiet way to do the project, have the child simply design their own dinosaur out of the precut shapes and glue them down.
3. To add a degree of complexity, and give the child some direction in their project, have them try to glue shapes that roughly match the outline of a coloring page.
4. For the most complex way to do this project, have the child match the shape cut outs exactly to a shape dinosaur print out, like a puzzle, and glue them down.
5. For any of these methods talk to your child as they make their picture, and ask them questions about the shapes and colors they are using. This is a great way to start to get a young toddler to see shapes all around them.

This is a great project to review shapes and colors for any toddler, and it can easily be adapted to the child’s individual level. You can create shape pictures for any other theme as well.