A Fold-Up Dinosaur Diorama

  

Dinosaur book and folder

There is generally one project that I am most smitten by each year. This year’s dinosaur project, which first grade teacher Mrs. Kaveny and I put together, is my star of the season.

Here's the Generic Dinosaur Sample Book that I Made to Show Students

We folded two 11″ x 17″ cover weight papers, a blue paper for the background, and a white paper for the foreground. Using pre-pressed score lines, students folded the sides of the white paper in 4.25″ on both sides, so that the paper closed like a set of french doors. We added a pop-up on the left  fold, and cut curvy mountain ranges on the top edge.  The blue paper was folded just a bit differently than the white so that the papers overlapped in an interesting way.

Jake's Dinosaurs

For me, the highlight of the project was bonding to our dinosaurs. Students were assigned a specific dinosaur. The librarian, Mrs. Fields, downloaded line drawings of dinosaurs from the Enchanted Learning website then students colored in their dinosaurs. Mrs. Kaveny and I both agreed that no one really knows what colors bedecked the dino’s bodies, so these  7-year old artists used colors at their own discretion. After the coloring was done, I took their drawings home, scanned them into my computer,  then copied the image three times, doing some shrinking and stretching, so that I was able to hand back three dinosaurs -a family!- to grace inside of the book.

Of course we needed to insert the research writing. There are two books within this book. On the right hand panel there’s a folded page which contained “fast facts.” In the center of the book there is a pocket which contains another book, which is filled with complete sentences and paragraphs.

Here’s what the pages for the writing looked like in my sample. After the part of the project that I facilitated was done, my time at the school was over, so I didn’t have a chance to see the project completed. Students did the writing and the rest of the landscape decoration with their teacher.

The finishing touch to the book was Mrs. Kaveny’s title for the book, Dino Details. We cut out the title in the shape of a dinosaur egg and made a crack. The students were talking about adding a baby dino on the cover too. Wish I had thought of that!