Book Love: I'm a Dirty Dinosaur

I found this book at an Usborne Books & More party, and just loved that the illustrations use real mud. What fun inspiration for early childhood play and creativity! (There's another one called I'm a Hungry Dinosaur that uses frosting- also really fun)

I was excited to use it during our STEAM play session this summer. The rhyming text is engaging, and can inspire some movement to go along with the story as well.

Connecting Activity: It would be so fun to create your own muddy dinosaur art along with this book, but for this class we opted to explore mud and dinosaurs through sensory play. First we thought about how to make mud and filled up one side of our table with dirt and water.

Then we added the dinosaurs and started playing. I had a separate table set up with soapy water so the dinosaurs could get washed after.

Many dinosaurs went back and forth several times between the mud and the water table, and eventually the mud table turned into a muddy bath table as well. :)