is a story in brief about a little boy who moves to the ......leo’s dino is a story about a little...

Leo’s Dino is a story about a little boy who moves to the countryside and makes an unusual friend – a dinosaur.

IN BRIEF

LITERACY LESSON IDEASBefore you begin, get everyone in the mood for a dinosaur story by printing off our Dino Footprint Sheet at the end of this pack. Stick them to the floor of your classroom. Ask children who the footprints might belong to and how big the animal might be that made them. Introduce the idea that they could belong to a dinosaur. What do your class know about dinosaurs? Can they name any? Tell them the footprints belong to a Cetiosaurus called Twiggy and you’re going to read a story about him.

Read the story to your class and see our Word Wise sheet to discover the meanings of some of the less frequently used words.

After reading the story again, try our comprehension quiz and other literacy challenges on the Word Wise sheet

Perfect your letter writing skills and fire up the imagination with our Leo’s Letter task.

How does a big dinosaur like Twiggy move? Discuss it in class and ask the children to complete our Dino Moves sheet. How do other animals move? Can you come up with words for birds, big cats, rodents and snakes?

Imagine there’s a dinosaur living in your school playground. Write a story about it using some of the words on our Dino Moves sheet or use our Dino Finger Puppets or Masks to act out our dinosaur story.

If you like our story, try these wonderful dino stories too – Gigantosaurus by Jonny Duddle, Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds, and Tyrannosaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts. Also introduce your class to non-fiction books. Dinosaurium by Lily Murray and Chris Wormell is excellent, while DK and Usborne offer a range of informative dinosaur books.

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Tales from Today: Leo’s Dino 1 StorytimeTM

Teaching Resources


MATHS LESSON IDEAS2 What’s your favourite dinosaur? Do a class survey using our Favourite Dinosaurs Tally Chart. Fill in the tally chart and add up the votes to see which dino is the winner. Perhaps the winning dino becomes your class name for the week or a whole term.

Test your maths skills by completing our Dino Addition sheet. How many brothers or sisters will Twiggy have?

Twiggy the Cetiosaurus lived around 170 million years ago. Make a dinosaur timeline and stick our Dino Finger Puppets to it.

Find out about the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning. See the BBC Schools website for information about her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/mary_anning/ and read her life story in the fantastic Stone Girl Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning by Laurence Anholt and Sheila Moxley. Can you write a short biography about her inspired by what you’ve discovered?

HISTORY LESSON IDEAS3

Model dinosaur eggs or bones from playdough.

Use our Picture Frame to draw your favourite dinosaur. Can you make it camouflaged, like Twiggy? Look at the art of Liu Bolin, who makes himself disappear in his art: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/nov/08/china-art

Colour in our Leo’s Dino: Colouring Sheet.

Decorate our Dino Masks with collage materials to make them look textured and scaly.

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ART LESSON IDEAS4


Teaching Resources


Our dinosaur story is a brilliant introduction to key areas in the primary science curriculum – from EYFS through to KS2. Studying dinosaurs helps children to:

Understand the similarities and differences between the prehistoric period and today Learn about animals and their habitats Understand how environmental changes affect the natural world Know the difference between living and dead things Recognise how animals can be grouped according to what they eat (herbivores, omnivores and carnivores)

Explore life cycles Discover the importance of the food chain, and predator and prey

Make our Dino Footprints lead to a sandpit or trays filled with gravel or sand. Hide plastic toy dinosaurs, real fossils, or Playdough eggs or dinosaur bones in the sand. Ask children to roleplay being on a dig. What will they find? Can they research their finds and write about them, like real paleontologists? Label the finds to make this easier.

Discuss how fossils and bones are the key to how we know about animals that lived before us, including dinosaurs. What is a fossil? Does anyone have any fossils they can bring in and show class? Talk about where you can find fossils. Find examples to show the class.

Learn more about the Cetiosaurus featured in our story and sauropods with our Cetiosaurus Facts, then fill in our Dino Facts sheet with five facts about your favourite dinosaur. Alternatively, divide the children into groups and assign a dinosaur for them to research together. Use non-fiction books or tablets and appropriate websites, such as the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/dino-directory/index.html

Use our Dino Diet sheet as a starting point for learning about herbivore and carnivore diets. How did dinosaur diets differ from those of animals today? How were they the same? Sort our dinosaur Finger Puppets into herbivores and carnivores too.

Our Dead or Alive sheet will also help start a discussion about living and dead things, and animals that are extinct. Which animals on our sheet are no longer alive?

SCIENCE LESSON IDEAS5


Teaching Resources

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Check you know the meanings of all the words in our Storytime Issue 42 story, Leo’s Dino.

DESCRIBE A DINO!In the story we learn how Twiggy sounds and looks – he snorts, he is bright green, he looks friendly and he is as long as two buses. How do you think

he smells and feels like to touch? Describe him using these senses.

Contented – happy

Grumping around – being grumpy

Glumly – sadly

Shuddered – shook

Expression – strip, undress

Gawped – stare with mouth open

Frowned – furrowed brows

Sniggered – laughed in a mean way

Protested – disagreed in a firm way

Bunting – party decorations

Bustling – full of activity, lively

Introduce myself – make myself

known to someone

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Imagine Leo found a different animal at the bottom of the

garden – maybe a lion or a gorilla instead of a dinosaur.

How would this change the story?

IMAGINE IT!

leo’s dino: Word Wise Sheet StorytimeTM

Teaching Resources

WORD WATCH

MAKE US LAUGH!

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QUICK COMPREHENSION CHECKER1. How was Leo’s new home different to his last one?

2. What did Leo miss?

3. Why did Twiggy introduce himself to Leo?

4. Why do you think nobody believed Leo about Twiggy?

5. Why did Leo feel sad at the party at first?

In the story, Leo’s dad invents

a dinosaur called a seesaw-us.

Invent your own dino joke here.HA!

What do you call a dinosaur that’s noisy

when it sleeps?A bronto-snore-us!

leo’s dino: Word Wise Sheet 2 StorytimeTM

Teaching Resources

NAME CLASS

tales From today: Leo’s Dino StorytimeTM

Teaching Resources

LEO’S LETTER Imagine you are Leo writing a letter to your old friends. Tell them about Twiggy. What will you say about him? Can you give your friends a dinosaur fact?



NAME CLASS

Circle the words that describe how a dinosaur moves. Can you come up with your own word too? Write it in the box below.


Teaching Resources

DINO MOVES

Glide

Stomp

TiptoeGallop

ClompStamp Prance

Tramp

Flutter thud

My word is...

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FAVOURITE DINOSAUR

TALLY CHART


Teaching Resources

NAME

CLASS What’s your favourite dinosaur? Do a class survey and add up the votes to find out.

PET tally totalCetiosaurus

Tyrannosaurus

Stegosaurus

Triceratops

Pterosaur

Velociraptor

Ankylosaurus

Other

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Answers: 1. 6 eggs, 2. 8 eggs, 3. 10 eggs, 4. 9 eggs. Complete the Sum – 2 eggs.

NAME CLASS

DINO ADDITION

1. + =2. + =3. + =

4. + =

+ = 10


Teaching Resources

Leo found lots of dino eggs in the woods behind his new house. Can you add up each row?

COMPLETE THE SUM How many eggs are missing to finish off this sum? Draw them below.


NAME CLASS


Teaching Resources

Leo’s Dino really did exist a long time ago. Here are some facts to help you bring Twiggy to life.

CETIOSAURUS FACTS

The Cetiosaurus was first discovered in England in 1841 by a scientist called

Richard Owen.

Richard Owen was so confused by the bones he found, he thought the

Cetiosaurus was related to a giant crocodile.

It was the first sauropod ever discovered.

A sauropod is a dinosaur with a very long neck, a long tail and four legs.

Sauropods are herbivores – that means they don’t eat meat.

Other sauropods include the Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and the Brachiosaurus.

Sauropods travelled in herds, which is why three Cetiosaurus skeletons were

found together in 1868.

They lived in the Middle Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago.

Dinosaur experts still haven’t found a Cetiosaurus skull, so nobody knows

how big its head was.

Sauropods are some of the biggest land animals

that ever lived. The biggest sauropod was ten

times as heavy as an elephant!

WOW!Dino experts think the Cetiosaurus was about 18 metres long – as long as two double-decker buses!


NAME CLASS

My dinosaur is the


Teaching Resources

Now it’s your turn. Find out five interesting facts about a dinosaur and write them here.DINO FACTS!

1

2

3

4

5


NAME CLASS

DINO DIET

Twiggy ravi

Answers: A herbivore doesn’t eat meat, so Twiggy would probably have eaten lots of leaves and shrubs, and possibly

fruit, berries and flowers too. Ravi the Tyrannosaurus is a carnivore, so he ate meat from other dinosaurs that were alive

at the time, including the triceratops and even other Tyrannosaurus dinosaurs!


Teaching Resources

Draw lines to match the dinosaurs to the food they eat. Twiggy the Cetiosaurus is a herbivore. Ravi the Tyrannosaurus Rex is a carnivore.


NAME CLASS

Dodo

Komodo dragon

Hammerhead shark

Woolly mammoth

Rhino

Answers: The Spinosaurus, woolly mammoth and dodo are all extinct.

Spinosaurus

DEAD OR ALIVE?


Teaching Resources

Which of these animals is extinct and which ones are still alive? Circle the extinct animals.

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Write your dinosaur’s name here:

________________________________________

NAME CLASS


Teaching Resources

PICTURE FRAME

Draw your favourite dinosaur here or invent a new dinosaur and make up a name for it.

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NAME CLASS

Colour in this picture of Twiggy hiding in the trees. How many shades of green can you use?


Teaching Resources

DINOCOLOURING

SHEET

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Stick these dinosaur finger puppets to lollipop sticks to act out your own dinosaur story, create your own dino landscape or use them in sorting activities.

Stegosaurus

Pterosaur

Cetiosaurus


Teaching Resources

FINGER PUPPETS

2018

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Stick these dinosaur finger puppets to lollipop sticks to act out your own dinosaur story, create your own dino landscape or use them in sorting activities.

2018

Tyrannosaurus

Triceratops

Spinosaurus


Teaching Resources

FINGER PUPPETS


tales From today: Leo’s Dino - Dino Masks StorytimeTM

Teaching Resources

Print our dino masks to act our story or make up your own dino story!



Teaching Resources

DINO FOOTPRINTS

Print out and cut out several of these dinosaur footprints and stick them to the floor of your classroom to introduce your dinosaur topic.

is a story in brief about a little boy who moves to the ......leo’s dino is a story about a little...

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