Make a Stegosaurus Puppet

Jul 23, 201845 min activity

Creating a Stegosaurus puppet can help your child understand how the dinosaur’s plates and spikes helped it survive.

Show your child a picture of a Stegosaurus, either printed out from the Dinosaur Train Field Guide, or found in a book. Talk about what the Stegosaurus looks like. Your child will probably comment on the Stegosaurus’ plates, spiked tail, and maybe its shape.

Explain to your child that this animal’s plates and spikes may have helped it survive. Not only did they help protect it from becoming food for some other types of dinosaurs, but some scientists think the plates may have also helped the Stegosaurus to cool off. (Background: Fossil evidence suggests that Stegosaurus plates contained blood vessels. When a Stegosaurus turned its body away from the sun’s rays, its blood vessels received less sun exposure than when the plates were directly facing the sun.)

Materials

Directions

Print out the Stegosaurus “plates and spikes” PDF. Help your child cut out the pictures of “bony plates” of different sizes. How many plates are there? Explain that a Stegosaurus usually had 17 back plates, just as dogs have four legs or humans have five fingers on each hand.

Help your child cut out the Stegosaurus face from the PDF and tape it to the paper bag or draw your own Stegosaurus face on the paper bag.

Tape or glue the 17 plates on the back of the bag in two rows. Nine of the plates go on one side of the Stegosaurus’ back while the others will go on the other side of the back, alternating in alignment.

Cut out the paper tail. Then tape four short pieces of straw on it. These are the tail spikes. Attach the tail to the puppet.

Have your child create a sun by either tracing the paper plate on the yellow construction paper and then cutting it out or by coloring the paper plate yellow.

Your child can pretend to be the sun by holding it up in the “sky.” Have your child place the Stegosaurus puppet so that the plates are sideways facing the sun. Then have your child turn the puppet 90 degrees, so the plates no longer face the sun. This will help your child understand how Stegosaurus plates help them beat the heat.