Bit of a long shot…

My class topic next term is dinosaurs. I’m looking to get a class set of plastic dinosaurs for display and/or use by the children. Any tips on what to get/look for? Ideally I’d like ones that are to scale, so that the children get an idea of comparison.

Not looking too spend much, I have a class Christmas present budget of £25 (usually for things to go in the wet play cupboard) so I could sneakily give them to the class for Christmas! Otherwise the cost is likely to come out of my own pocket – which I don’t mind as long as they’re not too much.

Schliech ones arevthe best but you wont get much fore 20 quid

Thanks, been looking here – http://www.everythingdinosaur.com but any input would be good.

Bear in mind that they did not all co-exist. T. rex and Stegosaurs never met each other.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/on-dinosaur-time-65556840/?no-ist

Seems like they might have gone collectable but the old Invicta ones were brilliant. That’s just my image of what a toy dinosaur is. Still got my triceratops somewhere, because triceratops.

View post on imgur.com

My 2yo is crazy on them in the entertainer toy shop you can get bundles or single units for about £1 each

My kids have been quite into them so we’ve been around the museums and sites. The Natural History Museum shop has an online version, and their stuff is pretty decent, but I think their set are all similar sizes, so not so handy for scale comparisons. The selection at Smithsonian was not so good, but the Field Museum stuff is excellent, but you’d struggle to get shipping in your budget, so you’d need someone travelling to the sates to bring them. The museum in Dorchester by the Jurassic Coast has a good shop, I think they do mail order.

@ crankboy

FACT:

Thanks all. And good point Ambrose. It’s a new topic for us, so no doubt I’ll discover all sorts of things like that when we manage to get the planning done!

Not sure whether to do a trip to the NHM or get a dinosaur expert/palaeontologist in for the day. Swaying towards the former as dinosaurs/learning aside a day out in London is something most of the children at our school don’t get to do too often.

We have the nice ones from the posh toy shop , my brother buys them for cranbrat and throws in a free lecture about how the Dimetrodon is not properly a dinosaur and the veloceraptor should have feathers.

They look really good but may be prohibitively expensive . most boutigue toy shops and museums stock the range. May be one or other would loan some to you for some discreate advertising.

As AA said up there, Schliech ones are the best. Unfortunately you won’t get a lot for £20.

As a fun teaching aid, there is an episode of Little Howard’s Big Questions from series 1 that does the Isle of White and dinosaurs. Fun and accurate.

You may find that your local museum has a loans service that can provide some real specimens.

And go to the NHM, Dippy is due to be removed soon 🙁

To scale might be hard. If a Velociraptor was a sensible size then the Apatasaurus would be the size of a dog…

To scale might be hard. If a Velociraptor was a sensible size then the Apatasaurus would be the size of a dog…

I was thinking along those lines; regardless of what Jurassic Park might have us think, Velociraptors weren’t as big as the movies would have you think.
And they had feathers.
In fact, it’s looking more and more like most of the bipedal sauropods, or at least the carnivores, were feathered.
Dinosaurs live among us! Tweet tweet! 😀

Yeah just take a look at a chicken’s eyes and feet – scaly.

You could blow their minds straight away by telling them that Jurassic Park should really have been called “Cretaceous Park w/a little Jurassic stuff thrown in” .

Thanks all.

The local museum doesn’t do loans, I’ve already asked over something else.

Depends on the age of the children; buy some cast dinosaur bones and have a paleontology dig in the sandpit, great fun, or you could save your money and make some

…or this sort of thing

Nice Timba- I like those ideas.

I have a short reprieve, we’re going to do a short topic on the human body first, then move on to dinosaurs in March/after Easter so we can make it a bit more outdoorsy in decent(ish) weather.

Seems like they might have gone collectable but the old Invicta ones were brilliant. That’s just my image of what a toy dinosaur is. Still got my triceratops somewhere, because triceratops.

Hell yeah. Ive got a lot of them somewhere, my friend had the Brontosaurus, i was rather jealous.

@hammerite

Ebay for dinos?

Just started a dinosaur topic with my p3 classes. There’s lots of cheap, easy activities you can do with them. My intro is always “why did they die out”. They can learn about differeent theories, Alvarez hypothesis for example, but also learn that scientists can and do disagree. Then i get them to write their own theory. Nice bit of creative, yet scientific writing. If you want to swap ideas etc my email is in profile.

I was going to post that plastic dinosaurs,being oil based products, are actually made from real dinosaurs.
but then i remembered this: dinosaurs

Thanks all.

@twicewithchips
Is it not now recognised that oil is created by abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth?

Local uni with a geology dept will probably let you have a look at their fossils – more likely to be invertebrates than megafauna but who doesn’t like a game of sp. the lingulla?*

*everybody hates sp. the lingulla

Drop me an email dude I have a shed load of real fossils from all over I can dig out for you from when I was younger and nerdier just need an addy and I’ll post them out to ya

Wow thanks for the kind offer Cannondaleking.