Paper Plate Dinosaur Craft for Kids with Free Templates

This is a guest post for Learn with Play at Home written by the lovely Kate from The Craft Train. For more of their awesome ideas, be sure to check out their site. Enjoy, Debs :)

5 Paper Plate-a-sauruses with templates

Here’s an activity for all the dinosaur-loving kids out there. These paper plate-a-sauruses are based on the real species and all feature a colourful paper plate body with a paper cut-out head, legs and tail. 

They can help kids learn the real names of the dinosaurs and also have a fun, messy art and craft element to them. 

My friend’s 5 year old boy tested this idea out for me and absolutely LOVED the dinosaurs he made (a T-rex and a Stegosaurus), and suggested next time we could make a Pterodactyl and a Diplodocus. 

I’ve gone one better and created a Triceratops as well, so you have 5 dinosaur templates to choose from that you can make with your kids. My girls had fun making these too.

You will need:

• Paper plates

• Coloured heavy paper stock for your dinosaur templates (at the bottom of the post)

• Scissors and a hole punch (or googly eyes if you prefer)

• Items to decorate your paper plates with. You can use anything you like, but we used paints and sponge stamps for ours.

How to:

Cut some paper plates in half and decorate them. We used paints but for a less messy option try pencils, textas, crayons or stickers.

My kids loved stamping patterns with these sponge stamps, made by cutting simple shapes from a kitchen sponge. They are sooo quick and easy to make.

Most of the templates work best by painting the back of the paper plate, but for the Pterodactyl the front side works best.

Decorating the plates will keep them busy for a while …

Leave the painted plate art to dry for an hour or two.

Whilst they are drying you can cut out the paper dinosaur shapes from the templates below. 

For best results print them straight on to the heavy coloured paper stock. 

The Diplodocus is the easiest shape for little hands to cut out if you want your kids to do the cutting. 

The other templates are quite intricate and you will probably need to cut them out yourself.

Once you have cut out the paper shapes staple them on to your dry paper plate.

Punch a hole for the eye, or if you prefer stick on a googly eye

These are the dinosaurs we made …

Templates

These templates are designed to fit a standard dinner sized paper plate.

Click the links below to download your own copy of the dinosaur templates

They will open in a Google Doc. 

Click on "File" in the top left and then choose "Download" from the drop down menu. 

Save to your computer and print out as needed. Enjoy!

Diplodocus Paper Plate-a-saurus Template

T-Rex Paper Plate-a-saurus Template

 Triceratops Paper Plate-a-saurus Template

 Stegosaurus Paper Plate-a-saurus Template

Pterodactyl Paper Plate-a-saurus Template

Thanks for reading my guest post on the fabulous Learn With Play at Home.

 For more fun kids craft ideas visit my blog www.thecrafttrain.com

Kate Grono is a talented, crafty, graphic designing, art directing, busy mum of 2!

Besides her awesome blog, you can also find Kate on FB, Pinterest and G+

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