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 Plesiosaurs – a group of long neck marine reptiles! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the amazing Plesiosaurs!
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
Plesiosaurs were first discovered more than 100 years ago, have had their fossils featured in several museums, and have even been featured in some dinosaur shows ! BUT, they may not be as familiar as some of the prehistoric creatures! 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
- Plesiosaurs 101 by National Geographic (3m). This is a great – but short – educational video by National Geographic!
- Dino Dana – Calling All Plesiosaurs S1E7. Dino Dana is the sequel to Dino Dan but follows a girl named Dana who, similarly, learns about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
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. Today, many scientists believe that the closest living relative of the plesiosaurs may be sea turtles! So, any sea turtle snack would be great for the day; but we also had an Archelon Day this week, so we decided to go a different direction for this snack.
If you have been looking at some of our other posts, you might have seen our Loch Ness Monster Day from our Mythical Creature Week. Because both the plesiosaur and Nessie have been described as large aquatic animals with long necks, there have been stories that the loch ness may actually be a plesiosaur. While there isn’t really any scientific evidence to support the claim, it’s still fun to compare and contrast. For our snack of the day, we went with Loch Ness inspired snacks 🙂
- Blue Jello with Nessi Spoons
- Cookies shaped with the Loch Ness Cookie Cutter
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 Plesiosaurs in each book. The last two are kid-friendly books specifically on Plesiosaurs.
- 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 Plesiosaurs:
- Plesiosaur (Ancient Marine Life) by Kate Moening
- The Plesiosaur’s Neck by Dr Adam S. Smith & Jonathan Emmett
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, PLESIOSAUR, MARINE REPTILE
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!
- New evidence suggests that plesiosaurs may be closely related to today’s sea turtles. If a plesiosaur and a turtle were to meet, do you think they would see the resemblance? What do you think they would ‘say’ to each other?
- There are several stories floating around that the Loch ness monster is actually a plesiosaurus. What do you think? Why?
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:
- Plesiosaur Coloring Page by www.education.com
- Easy Origami Plesiosaurs by Nina Art Craft
- How to Draw a Plesiosaur by Art Projects for Kids
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 plesiosaurs, these were sea turtles.
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!
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!
