Dinosaur Printing

This week Tom and I have been very dinosaur focused, we are particularly keen on the Tyrannosaurus Rex, with it being the biggest dinosaur we think its the best!

We decided to try and incorporate dinosaur printing in a painting activity. For Tom's birthday he was given a gigantic T-Rex dinosaur by one of his friends. Tom has built a little collection of his very own dinosaurs, we decided to get them all out and have some fun with paint.

I gave Tom his huge T-Rex first and we explored him. We were talking about all of the different parts of a dinosaur, from their tiny arms to their gigantic teeth! We have also been learning lots of facts about dinosaurs, like how chickens are a type of dinosaur, and also how it is likely that dinosaurs didn't roar, but instead they would tweet like a bird!

We then got some paint out. Using the eye gaze Tom was able to tell me what colour he wanted to make his dinosaur prints. Tom chose orange and silver and luckily these two colours were in our collection. The entire way through the activity Tom had the opportunity to eye gaze and communicate this way if he wanted to. Today he did a small amount of eye gazing but he was enjoying talking and communicating in 'Tom's language' so we went with it. I was modelling the eye gaze and I was using it along with my verbal language, but not insisting that Tom use it, it was purely there if he wanted to access it.

We started print the gigantic dinosaur and Tom was really receptive to this activity. He was having a lot of fun seeing the dinosaur stomp through the paint and then stomp all over the paper. I am sure my sound effects weren't quite as impressive as Tom would have hoped!

We then added some smaller dinosaurs into the mix. I decided to use these ones because I thought it would be good for Tom to hold them and he can do the printing himself. This will also help develop Tom's fine motor skills as well as it being great for his independent play.

Tom managed to print really well independently, he seemed to have a really great time. What was interesting is that Tom became more engaged with his eye gaze as we had been doing the activity for a little while. He started to say things like 'cold' and 'warm'. This is usually an indication that Tom wants to stop the activity and he wants to wash his hands in some warm bubbly water. At this point we decided that we would finish the activity, Tom's favourite part of any activity is always washing his hands or feet in warm bubbly water afterwards.

We had lots of fun with this activity. It was also really great because it felt like we were doing a truly age appropriate activity. Sometimes it can be hard to gauge what is too old or too young, but everyone knows that little boys LOVE dinosaurs and Tom is no different.