Stegosaurus Craft

We’ve been on a dinosaur kick for the last half year over here and I thought it would be fun to make a few dinosaur crafts.

Materials

• paper plate
• paints
• googly eyes
• construction paper
• glue (I recommend a glue stick for this one; we like Elmer’s disappearing purple)
• chenille stems and a hole punch OR clothespins

Directions

1. Paint the convex side of the plate and allow to dry.

My daughter always asks if she has to “use realistic colors”. We talked about how we do not know what dinosaur skin looked like so her guess is as good as anyone’s.  She responded that scientists look at lizards when deciding how dinosaurs might have looked.

2. While the plate is drying, draw a diagonal grid on the construction paper to cut out diamonds.  I marked a two-inch strip of paper off at every two inches on the top and bottom to create the grid. Cut out the diamonds.

3. Draw and cut-out a head and tail shape from construction paper.

4. Paste googly eyes on either side of the head.

5. Determine where you will fold the plate in half and crease it. Above the crease, paste the head on one end and the tail on the other.

6. Paste the diamonds around the top, outer edge of the plate. These are the bony plates.

7. Glue triangle scraps (left over from the diamond cuts) to the tail to make tail spikes.

8. Add paste to the bottom part of the plate. Fold the plate in half.

9. If you are using clothespins, just decorate and clip to the bottom for legs.  We used chenille stems so we punched a hole towards the front and the back and then threaded the stems to form the legs.

Enjoy a blast from the prehistoric past!

Educational Connections:

Science: There are many mysteries about dinosaurs. Were they all cold blooded, like lizards? Or were they warm blooded, like birds? Did they blend in with the environment? Or sport brilliant colors? Did they walk like crocodiles? Or more like elephants or hippopotamuses? Check out some of these articles for background information:

• Hot-blooded or cold-blooded? (Enchanted Learning)
• Hot-blooded or cold-blooded? (Dino Buzz from UC Berkeley)
• Were dinosaurs warm or cold-blooded? (Discovery News)