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Sunday 1 May 2011

Dinosaurs

Last week we took Ava to see Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular at the Entertainment Centre.
Ava absolutely loved the dinosaurs, especially the baby t-rex (he was very cute for a carnivorous monster) and was mesmerised by the lifelike performances and special effects. She came home wanting to dig for dinosaur bones in our backyard. She's so sure that there must be some in the vegie patch!


I don't know what it is about dinosaurs but all kids seem to go crazy about them. I remember thinking dinosaurs were pretty cool when I was a kid and being jealous of my brother for having a collection of stegosauruses, tyrannosaurus rexes and diplodocuses!


One of my favourite movies as a kid was Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, a film about a paleontologist who discovers a baby brontosaurus in the jungle and tries to find its family. At the time (some time in the mid eighties) I thought that the dinosaurs in the film were so incredibly life like. Of course, since then animatronics have improved *slightly* so I'm sure that if I was to watch it now I wouldn't be so impressed - especially if the reviews on IMDB are anything to go by! I might have to try and find a copy for Ava to watch. It's a little more child friendly than Jurassic Park!


Ava has been interested in dinosaurs for quite some time now and they feature quite regularly in her drawings. Not quite as regularly as fairies and castles but they're up near the top of her "must draw" list. 
I thought I'd share some of Ava dinosaur drawings on Little Hiccups.
I love that no matter how scary the dinosaur is supposed to be Ava still draws it with a smiley face :)

Apparently this is the Daddy and kid dinosaur.
These seem to be a cross between a t-rex and a stegosaurus!



T-Rex & Stegosaurus.
A fair bit of artistic licence has gone into the stegosaurus. I mean, it's got 7 legs!
Ava drew the head, tail and body of the stegosaurus in one squiggly, messy line.

Another squiggle drawing featuring the half t-rex half stegosaurus dinosaur.
I love how the spines go down the top and bottom of the tail!
I think the other creature might be a sheep :)
The drawings on red paper are from some time last year. I really should date the back of Ava's pictures. The pictures below are more recent.

A stegosaurus that Ava drew at the Dinosaurs Alive exhibition.

A more recent dinosaur (missing a leg!).
I'm not sure when Ava drew this one - sometime after February.

In January I took Ava to see the Dinosaurs Alive exhibition with some of her little friends. Ava really enjoyed Dinosaurs Alive and had lots of fun drawing dinosaurs at the end of the exhibition while the grownups relaxed with coffee :)
My favourite moment (and I'm so pleased I caught it on video) was Ava and her friend Milla being cheeky wiggling their bottoms at the Apatosaurus. After a little while the Apatosaurus let out a loud roar to which Ava and Milla bolted as far away as possible! Classic! If only I'd gotten around to going through my video footage I'd put it up here. Instead, here's a shot of Ava with the aforementioned roaring apatosaurus. Plus a shot of the much scarier (and amusingly named) gasosaurus.


Ava with the Apatosaurus

Ava with the Gasosaurus - or the "Fart Dinosaur" as it was renamed!

Another dinosaur themed favourite in our house is the song "I am a Paleontologist" from the fabulous They Might Be Giants album "Here Comes Science". Ava loves to sing along and it's so cute hearing her try to pronounce words like Pachycephalosaurus! That one's even tricky for the grown ups! You can watch the video for "I am a Paleontologist" here:




Well, I think that's enough dino-fun for now.
Time for me to start looking into making some plaster dinosaur bones to hide in the vegie patch!


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