Create a dinosaur garden small world play area for kids to enjoy outside! Fantastic for feeding the imagination and creating lots of storytelling prompts, this is sure to engage kids of all ages and keep them playing outside even longer. Just what we want!
Every spring I like to add some play spaces to our garden to encourage plenty of outdoor play and learning through the summer months. Some of these have remained for one season only and others became more permanent features.
As much as possible we like these to feature lots of natural materials and to be sensory rich too, so that they are as beneficial as possible while learning and experiencing the world through play!
This year we have set aside a small patch of our garden border to make this dinosaur garden small world play area! It was so ridicsulouly simple to create that it took just 10 minutes to put together after we got back from the garden centre with the things we needed. You could also do this in a trough, bucket or large tray too. Using a tray would mean you could make it more temporary and transportable between the indoor and outdoor play areas (ideal for a classroom environment with a smaller outdoor space.)
We simply planted a variety of textured, spiky and interesting looking shrubs in a semicircular shape, then backed the area with a small piece of willow fencing to mark it off. To this we added some small rocks and pebbles, a few pieces of wood and a set of high quality toy dinosaurs.
This is the set we found and we love them so far! They’re a great size for little hands.
And then they got busy playing! It sits on the opposite side of the garden to our CONSTRUCTION GRAVEL PIT so that there are two, distinct small world play areas to visit now. Of course, the diggers come and see the dinosaurs often, and vice versa, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Couple the learning space with these favourite dinosaur stories as a brilliant way to get reading together outside and then take turns retelling the stories using the props in the dinosaur garden!
What they are learning as they play:
creativity: using objects in the environment to create imaginative play scenes, storytelling,
knowledge of the world: talking about dinosaurs and their possible habitats and lifestyles, naming dinosaurs
literacy: taking on a character or role, retelling stories using props, storytelling
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