• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Many Little Joys

  • Shop
  • Parenthood
  • Crafts & Activities
  • Food
  • About
  • Disclosure

Dinosaur Footprints: Preschool Measuring Activity

April 27, 2016 by Meg 9 Comments

This simple preschool activity is a fun way to help your preschooler practice measuring and see how HUGE some of the dinosaurs were by making your own T-Rex footprint and comparing it to your family members’ feet.

This simple preschool activity is a fun way to help your preschooler practice measuring and see how HUGE some of the dinosaurs were by making your own T-Rex footprint and comparing it to your family members' feet.Note: This post includes affiliate links, meaning I will be paid a small commission on purchases made via those links; however, your cost will be the same.

Little boys and dinosaurs…they go together like peanut butter and jelly. And Little Man is hanging with the best of the dinosaur-lovers right now. He has requested a “dinosaur world” cake for his birthday next month and is constantly stomping around the house, roaring, and proclaiming himself to be a hungry T-Rex. That boy cracks me up.

Since I like to plan our preschool activities around things that Little Man seems interested in at any given time, I thought we were due for a dino-themed week. Little Man is thrilled. We’ve been reading about dinosaurs, sorting them by what they eat and how they move, singing songs, and lots of other fun things (see the bottom of the post for some great resources).

One activity we did the other day just kind of popped in my head, and I was happy to find that Little Man got really interested in it. We’ve been reading a book called How Big Were Dinosaurs? (affiliate link). It’s a Beehive Book Award Nominee for 2016, and Little Man loved learning about some lesser-known dinosaurs as well as some of his favorites. It’s great because it talks about how big (and small) various dinosaurs were in comparative terms that are easier for kids to understand.

How Big Were Dinosaurs

Even with the book, though, I felt like it was still a little difficult for Little Man to grasp the size of these creatures. I wanted to create an activity for him that would make the measurements more concrete for him.

Here’s how we learned about how big the dinosaurs were by making our own T-Rex footprint and comparing it to our own feet.

Materials:

  • large sheet of paper (we love the rolls you can get at IKEA, but any butcher paper or a poster board would work)
  • pencil/marker
  • measuring tape
  • tape
  • shoes
  • Other miscellaneous objects (optional)

What to do:

  1. First, lay out your paper and measure the size of your T-Rex foot. According to Enchanted Learning, a T Rex footprint was about 3.3 feet (1 meter) long and 1.55 feet (46 cm) wide. I had Little Man help hold the measuring tape while we marked the measurements.
  2. Sketch out your footprint. I just free-handed my footprint based on an image I found here. I’m not claiming that it’s super scientifically accurate, but I was more concerned with the overall measurements than the exact shape. Once we had a basic shape, I traced over it in marker and cut it out.
  3. Tape your footprint to the floor (this was important for us because the paper kept rolling up when we tried to leave it loose).
  4. Gather up a shoe to represent every member of your family. Start with your child’s shoe, and measure how many of his/her shoes you can fit from heel to toe inside the footprint. For Little Man, it was five. Then, do the same measuring with each family member’s shoe. We had an interesting result. Daddy’s shoe fit 3 times, mom’s fit 4, Little Man’s fit 5, and Little Brother’s fit 6.
  5. This also led to a great discussion about WHY Daddy’s shoe fit fewer times than Mommy’s, and other similar questions. It was a great little math skills lesson that Little Man found fascinating. He insisted that we leave out the footprint so we could show Daddy when he got home.
  6. If your child is still interested in measuring, you could take your dinosaur foot and use it to measure other objects in the house, as Jenae did over on I Can Teach My Child.

Want more fun dinosaur learning activities? Try these:

Dig for salt dough dinosaur bones

Trace letters with mini dinosaurs

Make dinosaur tracks with paint

Learn shapes with dinosaurs

This simple preschool activity is a fun way to help your preschooler practice measuring and see how HUGE some of the dinosaurs were by making your own T-Rex footprint and comparing it to your family members' feet.

I regularly link up here.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

related posts:

Filed Under: Crafts & Activities Tagged With: Activities, Preschool, preschool math, preschool measuring, STEM, toddler

Previous Post: « The woman behind the mom
Next Post: 8 sneaky ways to get picky eaters to eat healthy food »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ann

    May 3, 2016 at 5:58 pm

    There’s another measuring activity that I love – the one where you go into the street and use chalk to draw a whale… I was just thinking about it today and thought that I really don’t want to do that. I’m sure it would start to hurt my back. But this is PERFECT. My kids love dinosaurs and I know they would love doing this. So glad I found it!

    Reply
    • Meg

      May 3, 2016 at 11:08 pm

      I’m glad you found this activity, and I hope it saves your back. 🙂 And, I may just have to put my own back at risk and try the whale idea. I think it sounds like fun!

      Reply
  2. Erin @Nourishing My Scholar

    May 4, 2016 at 6:58 am

    This is such a cute idea! I think my preschooler will enjoy making comparisons with Dino footprints.

    Reply
  3. Heather

    May 8, 2016 at 7:38 pm

    I’m so glad you found the Everything Kids party with this creative idea! I love how it weaves a dinosaur theme into math and science learning.

    Reply
  4. Brian Betsworth

    September 30, 2017 at 4:13 pm

    Why is there a chicken on the cover? You’re not seriously trying to teach preschoolers to believe they “evolved” from dinosaurs, are you?

    Reply
    • Meg

      September 30, 2017 at 10:20 pm

      Not at all. The book just uses animals kids are familiar with for size comparison.

      Reply
  5. wendy lopez

    November 5, 2018 at 4:38 pm

    what curriculum will this be under ? can it be under creative movement?

    Reply
    • Meg

      November 7, 2018 at 9:02 pm

      It’s more of a STEM activity, but you could certainly add a creative moment aspect to it. Try having kids move to the song “We Are the Dinosaurs”. My boys LOVE that song.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How Big Were Dinosaurs? Elementary Science Exploration - Beyond Mommying says:
    October 25, 2017 at 6:40 am

    […] Dinosaur Footprint Measuring Activity […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Let’s be friends…

Reader Favorites:

Free Printable Alphabet Flashcards (upper and lowercase)
Best deals at Costco: 16 things I always buy (and a few to skip)
Banana Sushi (a fun & healthy snack for kids)
How to throw a Lego birthday party: a real mom's guide
5-in-1 Valentine's Day preschool games
Free Printable Number Flashcards (+ counting cards)

Copyright © 2023 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework