Learning With Dinosaurus Toys

Dinosaurs are fascinating to children. They have complicated names like Parasaurolophus and Scelidosaurus which kids love to master. They can be classified into meat-eating carnivores and plant-eating herbivores - kids love to classify things.

Fierce carnivores are terrifying monsters, but not too terrifying because they aren't around today. Tyrannosaurus Rex is the most famous carnivore and a favorite with kids. Spinosaurus was bigger though and he is becoming more popular. Herbivores like Triceratops and Stegosaurus have interesting horns and armor - they look funny!

Dinosaurs encourage kids to think about nature and particularly about species becoming extinct. It makes the risk of modern endangered animals very real. T-Rex and Pterodactyl have long since become extinct. It really could happen to other amazing creatures.

How do paleontologists find and excavate fossils and bones and reconstruct skeletons? How do paleoartists or dinosaur illustrators work out what a Giganotosaurus or a Velociraptor would have looked like?

Kids love to learn facts (and correct adults who get things wrong!). Pterodactyl wasn't actually a dinosaur, but they were around at the same time. Dinosaurs have legs that do straight down at the hips whereas reptile legs go out to the side. Oviraptor, the egg thief, didn't really steal eggs, the eggs it was found with were from its own nest!

And of course Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus were really big. Kids love to image a huge Sauropod towering over their house and longer than a bus. Yes, they were much., much bigger than Dad or their school teachers.

Dinosaur toys are brilliant for imaginative play and learning about nature and science and getting a sense of the history of our planet. In our experience kids start getting interested in dinosaurs as toddlers. Preschoolers and younger school aged kids become deeply interested and for many children the fascination develops as they become older and is taken through to teenage years and often into adulthood.