Back in 1999 Oxford University Press published my book called Dinosaur Alphabet.
Dinosaur Alphabet
It also came out as a Big Book. I used it in one of my road shows at the time and last week I was asked to do my Dinosaur Alphabet roadshow once again. This time it was with the Early Years Class at Settle Primary School. They arranged to meet me on one of their visits to The Play Barn in Settle – a children’s indoor soft play area.
In the play barn activity tent
As we went through the alphabet from Apatasuarus to Zephyrosaurus (the west wind lizard) we stopped off to try various activities such as catching a fish like baryonyx (we used a banana floating in a bowl of water), making sounds by resonance as Lambeosaurus might have done, discovering a nest of dinosaur eggs (ping pong balls) as made by Maiasaura and investigating the idea that the stones found in dinosaur stomachs were used to grind up food (we did a fair test with two sealed containers containing lettuce and one with a few pebbles in. After shaking them up the lettuce with the pebbles was described as a ‘green mush’).
A small herd of Lambeosaurs
The dinosaur stomach-shaking experiment
We finished by chanting our way through the alphabet with me calling out each name and the children shouting it back. It was pleasing to see that today’s young children still enjoy this final activity just as much as those who must now be almost twenty!
