Dinovember: Dino Invasion at the Library

It's Dinovember! We created a super fun event with prehistoric activities, art projects, games, and more! This event was a lot of work but was well worth it.

Set Up

This took over a week to prep between myself and my colleague. We split tasks roughly down the middle and managed to get everything together in time!

I put together a few decorations that will be up through the month. The first was our billboard.

This was easy to put together compared to our more elaborate designs. Letters, boarder, dino, done. It looks great in space and I heard about a parent telling their child that dinosaurs indeed did not read and that they are dead because of it. The kid checked out a lot of books that day!

Next is our follow the dino tracks passive program. This was simple in theory but took more time to put together than I thought. We purchased colorful masking tape and I did a bit of research on dinosaur tracks. I laminated everything and then taped a border around each picture before putting them down. Because we taped these laminated pages to the carpet, they seemed quite slippery. The tape was coming unstuck after just a few steps. I fixed this problem by using duct and covered most of the backs. This worked great and even my adult weight couldn't get it unstuck.

The last prep item I'll mention is that I made all the signs to help explain those stations. The craft signs included instructions and others said what the station was. I also made sure that each sign started with the word Dino.

Program Set Up

Books

Probably one of the most important things we do as librarians is connect people of all ages to books. I still forget to get books for my events until we're only a few days out. Luckily, dinosaurs are so popular that I found many items to display for all ages. We even had some books for the adults. The signs for this area had our schedule for this event (I'll talk about that later) and a sign that said books can be checked out. 

Crafts

We had three crafts that they could do at this event. Two were great to do during the event and the last one was a bit harder so we made it so anyone could take it home. All of these crafts were also easy to clean up due to it mostly being paper so that was a big plus.

The first craft was these cute plates made to look like Triceratops. This involved cutting, gluing, and coloring so a pretty solid craft for any age. You can find the instructions here. 

These dino masks were in a similar difficulty range as the Triceratops. This was great for littles to do and didn't take a long time. You can find the free printables here.

This was the more difficult craft. We printed out instructions and provided supplies as usual. We had a few of the older kids do this one but it took a good chunk of time for them to complete. It looked awesome when it was done. 

Activities

A classic bean bag toss that encouraged kids to feed our dinosaur. My coworker made this from a box and spare supplies we had. It has the shape of an upside-down V with feet pointing towards the middle that we could tape down. We used some heavy-duty tape and still had to reapply it a few times throughout the event because these kids threw hard. There is also some book tape behind the teeth that we applied last minute that made it so none of the teeth broke. We could even use this again next year.

This station was one of our most popular. We had two kids who decided to fetch the bags and hand them out to people waiting in line. We had an issue in that we had to repeatedly keep telling kids that the goal was not to throw as hard as possible. the goal is to get it in the mouth. 

Dino Dig

This was our other very popular activity. We already had these sensory bins that we use in storytime. We purchased play sand and a few small plastic dinos for our blue bin. The red bin had dyed pasta, pom poms, and measuring cups. Also, I would highly recommend getting a tarp or something to cover the ground if you do something like this. You can get a decently sized one for around $20 on Amazon and it is so worth it for lots of library programs.

Educational Area

Our last activity involved kids learning about how big some dinosaurs were and what they ate. I cut out a large footprint (roughly the size of a T-Rex foot) and encouraged everyone to place their foot on it and imagine just how big they were. 

The table had a few pieces of play food and dinosaur figures that showed their teeth. We used masking tape to section the table into carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. They were asked to sort the dinosaurs and food into the correct areas. For example, a pizza can have meat and veggies so it goes in the omnivore section. Dinos with sharp teeth eat meat so they are a carnivore. 

Photo Booth and Storytime

Please admire this photo booth area we put together. We pulled in our storytime rug and made rocks out of paper and cardboard. We already had the backdrop but had to purchase the strings of leaves. One of our amazing colleagues from another department cut out all the tropical leaves that we used here and throughout the room. The fuzzy fabric is also something we already have but I saw the same stuff at Walmart the next day so you can look for it there. We also purchased a photo booth set from Amazon that had cute puns on it. This area was used as a photo booth until 3 pm which was when we had our dinosaur storytime. 

Storytime

After about an hour into our program, we had everyone gather to read a few dinosaur books together. This was surprisingly popular. We had kids asking when it was happening, what books we read, and if they were too old to listen. We had a lot of people in the room and everyone but a few adults sat near the rug and listened the whole time. My colleague read We Don't Eat Our Classmates! by Ryan Higgins, Crunch, the Shy Dinosaur by Cirocco Dunlap, and What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night: A Very Messy Adventure by Refe Tuma. While she was reading, I ran around the rest of the room and tidied up the crafts and sensory bins. I also prepped for our next fun activity.

Dino Egg Race

I forgot to take pictures of this one but it was a blast. We found some giant Easter eggs on Amazon and mini glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs. We had the kids balance the eggs on a serving spoon a walk from one point to the other. I had kids go two at a time and whoever won the race got a mini dino. We used masking tape to create the lines and I ended up moving the finish line closer for the younger kids when needed. They all seemed to love the race and were super excited about the dinosaurs. We did this right after storytime so it was about 3:25 pm. We had enough mini dinos for each set of kids to get one. After we finished, most of the guests left. This was great for us since we had a quick turn around on cleaning everything up. 

Takeaway

This was a awesome event. The kids loved it. Families loved it. We loved it. It was a lot of work but we can do it better next time since we don't have to make everything again. I would highly recommend celebrating Dinovember if you get the chance.