Make a set of "Dinosaurs A to Z" alphabet cards!

On my birthday, this post was the featured guest post over on "I can teach my child", which is a fantastic site for getting all sorts of kid-activity ideas! It was great to share our dinosaur alphabet cards with Jenae's readers, so now I'd like to share with you (in case you missed the post on her site)!

For the past two years or so, one of Big Brother's favorite things is dinosaurs! In fact, the picture is from his dinosaur birthday party last year (with 5-day old Little Brother)! Given this love of dinosaurs, it probably comes as no surprise that he LOVES the PBS Show, "Dinosaur Train". 

Since we've been working on learning all the letters, we were quite excited to see an episode with a "Dinosaurs A to Z" song! Big Brother wanted to see the song part again, so an internet search led me to two things:

1. the full Dinosaur Train soundtrack on i-tunes (which is now his favorite thing to listen to in the car).

2. "Dinosaurs A to Z" lesson plans on pbs.org. There, you can watch the video clip and download free printable materials! 

I used the printables to make some dinosaur alphabet cards. Here's how:

- Print the materials (I printed 2 sets of the illustration pages).

 

- cut out the illustrations & dinosaur names and attach them to large index cards (I used mod podge over the pictures to make the cards a little sturdier & to prevent the pictures from ripping off).
- let dry & cut apart the cards.

That gave us one nice set of dinosaur alphabet cards, but I decided to make a second set so we could do some matching activities. At this point, Big Brother has a pretty solid grasp on his capital letters, but needs more practice with lower case. So, for the second set...
- cut out the illustrations, cutting off the letters.
- paste the cut illustrations to large index cards.
- once dry, write in the lower case letters and the dinosaur names in lower case letters (not exactly "scientifically correct" to do so, but I'm more concerned about learning letters right now).
- then, cut the cards apart.

With these two sets of cards, there are various activities you can...
-sequence the cards in alphabetical order

 

 - scatter the cards and then find the upper & lower case matches or even play "memory".

Any way you use them should be great for reinforcing letter-learning and are sure to be a hit with your little dinosaur-lover! 

Do YOU have a little one who loves dinosaurs?