DinosaurRumpus by, Tony Mitten

You know that empty Quaker Oats can you have been saving for that one time you might need it? Well this is your moment girl! Anytime I can incorporate a book with music it is an ultimate win for me! My son thought it was the coolest thing making his own instrument that he could play while we read this book. It was even an extra bonus with my little man because he is obsessed with dinosaurs at the moment. It has such a fun rhythm to it and of course my toddler can barely handle the nail-biting climax when the Dinosaurrumpus dance party has a scary visitor, you guessed it...the T-REX! Literacy, music, art...This activity is fun and engaging as well as works on the following objectives with your toddler.

* basic shape names

* Verbal communication

* Using descriptive Words

* identifying colors

* Beat and Rhythm

Not to mention strengthening fine motor skills of doing a basic art project along with it!

Supplies:

1. Empty Oats container or some kind of cylinder container with a lid

2. Duct Tape

3. construction paper of different colors

4. rice or beans

5. the book "Dinosaurrumpus"

6. scissors

7. glue stick

Preparation:

Beforehand I cut out different shapes out of different colors of construction paper. My son just barely turned two and wasn't too familiar with shapes at all so I did the very basic shapes; star, heart, circle, square, rectangle. I then sorted all of them together by their shapes. I also taped two pieces of construction paper together so that it would be long enough to fit around the circumference of the oats container. This prep work I literally did as I was talking to my toddler about what we were going to do. It was so fast and easy.

1. We read the Dinosaurrumpus several times before doing this activity but if your child has never read it before then you might want to read it before. Point out each pile of shapes and say "these are the triangles. These are the hearts...etc" If you would rather focus on colors you can sort the piles by colors rather than shapes. I put the piles far enough away so that my child wouldn't be able to reach it on his own. I told him we are going to decorate our own drum to play at the Dinosaurrumpus party. I then repeated what each pile was and told him to tell me what color and shape he wanted to use to decorate. For example: "the pink star" or "the purple triangle" I would then hand him what he said and he got to glue it on with the glue stick all by himself (he thought that was pretty cool). At first he pointed to the shapes instead of verbalizing specifically what he wanted and I would just help prompt him to say it himself. By the end I was surprised how quickly he caught on, he didn't even need my help.

2. When he was done decorating with the shapes (of course you can decorate with anything else your little one's heart desires as well) we dumped in 1-2 scoops of dry macaroni noodles into the oats container. I then did a layer of duct tape over the lid of the container just to make sure we wouldn't have noodles flying everywhere...I also like the sound of the drum with the layer of duct tape. We then taped the paper he decorated around the oats container to finish up his drum. SO EASY!

3. We then read "Dinosaurrumpus" by Tony Mitten. There are a million different ways you can use the drum while reading this book. My son would always want to hit the drum on the onomatopoeias (words that represent sounds) like "donk!" or "bomp!" and then we would shake the drum to rhythm of the words on "shake, shake, shudder..near the sludgy old swamp. Everybody's doing the dinosaur romp." It just brought this book to life to add our own music with the drum!

4. Just for fun we watched some drumming videos on YouTube. I actually really liked this one. It taught very simple drumming patterns that my son actually caught onto. The rest of the day he was drumming on things saying "pa! pa!"

Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!! :)