Exploring Feelings Using Dinosaurs
For reception/foundation stage school children, one of the challenges can be getting to grips with sentence construction and expressing thoughts and feelings in words. As many young children love dinosaurs and all things to do with the Dinosauria, these long extinct creatures can help when it comes to their educational development.
Within the mandatory framework for the education and development of children in the United Kingdom from birth to five years of age, as set out by the Department of Education, there are key objectives for teachers and educationalists to try to attain. For example, educational activities must involve programmes that give children opportunities to experience a rich language environment and to develop confidence when it comes to expressing themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. In addition, an important cornerstone of early years development is literacy.
Dinosaurs can help children in these areas as teachers encourage their charges to link sounds and letters and begin to read and write. At this age it is important to think of materials that can enable children to explore and share their own thoughts and feelings, their ideas and moods through a variety of different media.
At Everything Dinosaur, our team members have created dinosaur drawings with speech bubbles in a bid to motivate children from four years and upwards to express themselves and develop sentence writing skills.
Stegosaurus Helps with Sentence Construction
Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur
The picture above shows one of our typical dinosaur themed educational resources. This A4 sized document illustrates a Stegosaurus with a person next to it to show scale. The dinosaur can be coloured in by the child and then their thoughts can turn to what the Stegosaurus might be thinking or saying. It is their job to express the thoughts and feelings of the Stegosaurus using their sentence construction skills. The name of the dinosaur is included, plus a handy pronunciation guide and the actual meaning of the prehistoric animal’s name. Team members supply a variety of such dinosaur themed resources, all aimed at helping young children develop and learn.
A spokesperson for Everything Dinosaur commented:
“Teaching professionals must consider the individual needs and interests of the children in their class. Many children at reception/foundation stage already have a fascination for dinosaurs and so dinosaur themed activities can be used to create challenging and enjoyable learning experiences”.
With the likes of Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex already well known to most children of school age, it can help to utilise their love of dinosaurs in creative ways allowing key early years and foundation stage learning objectives to be achieved.