Rainy Day Projects

Dinosaurs Arts & Crafts for kids

Paper, glue, paint, and recycled-material projects with a finished thing to keep.

Part of Dinosaurs activities and all arts & crafts.

No-prep ideas for this

Something to say right now while you get the dinosaurs set out — or instead of it. All the quick ideas.

  • Stomp around like a dinosaur and I will try to guess what kind you are.

    Stomp around the room pretending to be a dinosaur and narrate what you are doing out loud. Every few steps, freeze and roar. The adult guesses what kind of dinosaur you are based on your moves.

    15 minutes · Ages 3–8 · Adult alongside · No mess · Needs nothing

  • Show me four totally different dinosaur roars.

    Make a different roar for four dinosaurs — a tiny one for a small dinosaur, a slow low one for a huge one, a scared one, and your scariest one.

    5 minutes · Ages 3–8 · Adult alongside · No mess · Needs nothing

  • Teach me everything you know about one dinosaur — give me a lecture.

    Pick one dinosaur you know well and give the adult a lecture: where it lived, what it ate, and one surprising fact. Then answer two questions the adult asks.

    30 minutes · Ages 5–10 · Adult alongside · No mess · Needs nothing

    Make more of it: Natural History Museum Curator Setup →

Dinosaurs Arts & Crafts at home

Dinosaurs already live vividly in most children's imaginations — they know the names, they know the sizes, they have opinions about which one wins in a fight. Arts and crafts give that energy somewhere to land that isn't a screen. Working with paper, dough, and cardboard slows things down just enough: children have to look carefully at shapes, think about scale, and make decisions about color and texture. The three projects here each engage with something genuinely interesting about prehistoric life — how fossils form, how enormous those footprints were, how a stegosaurus's plates might have worked — so the making and the thinking feed each other rather than competing.

What is in this set

The three dinosaurs Arts & Crafts activities here run from 25 to 75 minutes — Torn-Paper Dinosaur Footprint Collage is the quickest, Cardboard Stegosaurus Relief Sculpture the longest. Between them they cover ages 3–5, ages 5–8 and ages 8–10, and each card below says which. Each one wants an adult at least nearby.

Choosing one

For ages 3–5, Torn-Paper Dinosaur Footprint Collage is the right reach: no scissors, no waiting, immediate visual result. Ages 5–8 with patience and a rainy afternoon will get the most from Salt-Dough Fossil Impressions, though the overnight dry time means managing expectations up front. Cardboard Stegosaurus Relief Sculpture is built for ages 8–10 who want a multi-stage challenge and a finished thing worth displaying. If time is short, the collage and the fossil impressions both deliver in under an hour; the stegosaurus needs a full afternoon.

Before you start

For all three activities, clear and cover the work surface before calling the child over — once they appear, momentum matters. Have paper towels and a damp rag within reach regardless of which project you choose. The salt dough must be mixed and rested ahead of time for the fossil activity; the cardboard for the stegosaurus should be cut into flat panels before the child sits down. The one thing that derails all three: not enough glue. Children this age consistently under-apply. Set out glue generously, on a flat lid or in a small dish, rather than having them squeeze from the bottle directly.

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