Thinking Thursdays: A little dinosaur book (Free printables!)

In anticipation of our trip to Brussels, I prepared a little dinosaur book to keep him occupied, especially for the long car rides.  It consisted of an introduction, and a whole load of pages where he could practice writing the names of various dinosaurs, something that he always asks to do (this boy ONLY wants to write dino names, and is not willing to pick up his pen/crayon for any other topic), as well as a mini sorting activity for dinosaurs based on their diets:

Little Dino Book (Printable)

(You can click on the button above to download the printable, all pictures used were obtained from Wikipedia.)

I printed the pages out, cut them into half, folded them and glued the backs of the pages together to form a mini-book.  I also added other activities, such as pre-writing practice, pattern matching, and mazes from the following sets of printables:

:: Dinosaur Mazes from Busy Bee Kids Printables (you can actually tailor the level of difficulty!)

:: A whole load of activities from 3 Dinosaurs

If you want, you can get more printables from here:

:: Dinosaur Kindergarten Pack from Royal Baloo

:: Dinosaur Printables from Activity Village

To fit those other activities into the book, I chose to print two pages per side, cut them to size and glued those pages down too.  Then I just added some washi tape to reinforce the spine, cut out the other bits that the boy needed to paste, and brought along crayons and glue in a ziplock bag:

The boy was delighted with his book!  It kept him busy during the car ride, where he flipped through and identified the dinos:

It kept him occupied during a long wait for lunch:

And also gave us some moments of peace after dinner:

And to be fair, I prepared something for Baby J too, a modified version of the treasure hunt bottle, which was filled with colourful balls, rice, and various types of pasta for him to examine.  It has kept him pretty happy during car rides!

I brought along some pasta for Junior J to thread too.  These were coloured by him using markers previously.

I still don't understand the little boy's fascination for those huge beasts, but I'm glad the little book was well used during the trip!  And I have to admit I'm learning a lot about dinosaurs along the way, like how Iguanodons are supposed to walk on fours and are not bipedal as previously depicted... and do you know that those Velociraptors in "Jurassic Park" are actually Deinonychus?  The real Velociraptors were much smaller and had feathers!  Ah, home-learning means mummy learns too!