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Do your little ones love dinosaurs?

If your answer was do birds fly?, check out this fun winter sensory activity that incorporates their favorite dinosaur toys!

Here’s how to get started!

This one is very easy to set up. You can either set it up indoors by bringing in the snow or you can take your dinosaur toys outside.

When we did this activity we were being blasted with a huge polar vortex, that was blanketing most of North America so it was much too cold to play outside for long. So I decided to bring this activity indoors.

To prepare, I went outside and filled our large sensory bin with snow. It was as easy as that!

I packed the snow down inside the sensory bin. I find that this helped to keep it cold longer so that it lasted longer while inside. I laid out a picnic blanket on the floor to help catch any snow that fell out while my daughter played.

Dinosaur World

Then I got out our toy dinosaurs, big and small and set them up in the snow. I also added some plastic trees to help create a prehistoric scene.

Ice Age

I find that it is fun to set up story lines when we do a fun sensory play activity like this one.

I try not dictate her play.

In an activity like this I want her to be in control of the story but I will set the scene for her and incorporate some fun facts as well.

For this activity, I told my daughter that the dinosaurs were going through an Ice Age, where snow and ice covered most of the Earth. Even in places that do not normally get snow had snow. So the dinosaurs had to try and survive in cold conditions.

Fun Facts about Ice Ages

Looking for more fun facts about Ice Ages you can incorporate into this activity? Check Earth Science for Kids: Ice Age s.

Total Hit

This was a total hit (of course, as anything with dinosaurs usually is)!

She went with the Ice Age story for a little bit and them she started to make up her own story.

How long does the snow last?

Despite my fears, the snow did not melt right away nor did it make a huge wet mess. Since I packed the snow down in the sensory bin it lasted for nearly an hour. It did of course start to melt but it just formed dense wet packing snow rather than water.