Triangle Triceratops

...with a few rectangles, ovals, and a heart too! This is another great shape dinosaur activity... just like the Textured Shape Dinosaur we made during the summer. My son's favorite Saturday morning TV show is Dino Dan. Today's episode had a triceratops... so this afternoon he asked to make one.

Materials Needed:

- green, white, and black cardstock (we used 3 different shades of green)

- scissors

- Elmers glue

- googly eyes

Directions:

Prep ahead

- 1 big oval, 1 small oval (body and head)

- 4 long rectangles (for legs)

- 1 heart

- 2 long triangles, 1 small long triangle (for horns)

- 1 small half circle (for mouth)

- 1 long triangle (for tail)

- lots of small triangles

1. Glue the big oval onto the paper

2. Add 4 legs

3. Add a tail

4. Glue the heart in the front of the dinosaur (for his large bony frill)

5. Add the oval head on the bottom of the heart

6. Next, add two big horns and one small horn (we forgot the small horn until the end)

7. After that we picked our favorite googly eyes and glued them on.

8. We added the half circle for a mouth and glued lots of mini triangles on as the large bony frill.

Then we remembered about the nose horn

We did this activity on the fly, so I cut up our shapes as we went and we were pretty pleased with how it turned out. I think it kinda looks like a triceratops and my little guy loved it, so that was all that mattered!

Dinosaurs Roar, Butterflies Soar by Bob Barner would be a great book to read along with this activity!

No Time For Flashcards has several other fun dinosaur crafts and book recommendations here. We have loved all of them!

While we did this craft we talked about all of the shapes as we glued them on.

You could also...

- count the rectangles

- count the triangles (there are lots!)

- count the sides of the shapes

- make up a story about your triceratops

- talk about the different colors used (work on words like light and dark... since there are several green colors used)

- practice scissor skills by having your little one snip paper to be the mini triangles

- add some texture to the dino's body and talk about how the dino skin feels- rough, smooth, bumpy... depending on the texture you try.

- practice prepositions as you add the parts to the dino (above, under, in front of, on top of, etc.)

But most of all... have fun! We liked making dino sounds and checking out pictures of triceratops on Google as well!