Welcome to our “Prehistoric Sea Creature Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to stunning (and sometimes terrifying) prehistoric sea creatures! For this day, we turned our attention to Mosasaurs – giant sea lizards! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the amazing Mosasaurs!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Though a mosasaurus was featured in a popular dinosaur movie, some kids may not be familiar with the mosasaur family. These sites are great introductions with kid-friendly facts, images, and related content! They’re perfect for providing a brief intro for your little ones (or to gather up some knowledge as well!)!
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- Face to Face with a Mosasaurus 🌊 Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous from Netflix After School (8m). This is a short snippet from the entertaining Camp Cretaceous series, where one of the characters comes face to face with a mosasaur!
- Mosasaurs 101 by National Geographic (3m). This is the same video featured in the web page with info mentioned in the Intro section.
- Mosasaurs: Lizard King of the Ancient Ocean by American Museum of Natural History (5m). This is a great short video featuring scientists speaking about mosasaurs.
- How Scientifically Accurate is the Jurassic World MOSASAURUS? By Nature’s Compendium (12m) And just for fun, this video compares the Jurassic Park interpretation of the Mosasaurus with what we know from scientific studies.
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
As new scientific discoveries are made, theories change and shift. Mosasaurs were once thought to be related to crocodiles but most believe that they’re now more closely related to snakes or lizards. So snacks of the day resembling any of those modern creatures would be fitting and fun to discuss!
For our snack of the day, we picked a yummy crocodile inspired snack – Crocodile Veggie Snack Dip for Kids by Home Time Activities. We deviated a bit from the recipe but it was still yummy!
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
The first three are books we brought back from our intro day and revisited just the page on mosasaurs in each book. The last two are specifically on Mosasaurs – one is a book for kids and the other is a great fact filled webpage!!
- Prehistoric Sea Beasts (If Extinct Beasts Came to Life) by Matthew Rake. This is a great book for elementary age children with fun facts and pictures!
- Smithsonian Kids Prehistoric Deep Sea by Marfe Ferguson Delano. This is a great book for elementary age children with fun facts and pictures!
- Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, and More by Darren Naish. There’s quite a great deal of really nice information in this one, but it’s definitely more for older or advanced readers.
Just Mosasaurs:
- Mosasaurs (Ancient Marine Life) by Kate Moening
- Webpage: Mosasaur Facts by Active Wild
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: PREHISTORIC, SEA CREATURE, FOSSIL, MOSASAUR
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Imagine you came face to face with a mosasaurus. What would you do?
- Do you think mosasaurus is as scary as what they might be closely related to now (lizards, snakes, komodo dragons etc)?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned:
- Mosasaur Coloring Page by www.education.com. We added these to our Prehistoric Sea Creature Wall!
- Clay Mosasaur Models – Using just clay and paint or play doh, make a mini mosasusar!
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
Continuing on our week-long project, we had them fill out their Field Journal and then compare/contrast with some of the modern day animals that may be (or were once thought to be) related to our prehistoric creature. For mosasaurs, these were snakes, monitor lizards, komodo dragons, and alligators.
In addition to filling out their Field Journal, there were also some fun building and science kits that we picked from:
- Building Kits. These definitely range in skill set and may be difficult for younger children. We ended up picking the first one and the end result was really awesome!
- Other:
- Mega Fossil Dig Kit This one contains quite a few amazing fossils, a mosasaur tooth included!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Prehistoric Sea Creature or Ocean Learning Fun Ideas, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
