At a Glance
This printable dinosaur scavenger hunt gets you little palaeontologists up and moving as they search for the eight hidden dinosaur cards and check each one off the list. Laminate-and-reuse means it's ready to play again and again. This dinosaur game builds visual scanning, visual discrimination, gross motor skills and some dino vocabulary.
Get ready for the expedition to begin the moment you hide those cards!
This dinosaur scavenger hunt come with 8 dinosaurs to hide and a checklist to track their finds.
Hide the cards around the room (or the garden, if you’re feeling adventurous), and send your little paleontologists off to track them all down.
Scavenger hunts are more than just fun -they’re a great way for your little ones to develop observation and social skills and get a bit of active learning in!
There’s a color and a black and white version included in the pack.
And if you’re already fans of all things prehistoric, there’s plenty more in our dinosaur printables collection to keep the theme going.
What Skills Can Your Children Learn and Practice?
Here are a few of the skills that your little ones can learn and practice when completing this scavenger hunt:
- Visual Scanning and observational skills – The ability to use their vision to search in a systematic way, from top to bottom or left to right.
- Pencil Grip and Pencil Control – Any time your child picks up a pen or pencil is a great chance to practice and develop these skills and if you choose the black and white version they can color in.
- Gross Motor Skills – as they’re walking (or likely running) around looking for the cards.
- Social skills – such as listening, taking turns, and communicating with their friends and family.
- Counting – They can count how many things they’ve found – or how many they still need to find.
How to Prepare This Printable Dinosaur Scavenger Hunt
Firstly go and download the game by clicking on the download box at the bottom of the page.
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Choose whether you want the color or black and white version, then print them off.
There’s 8 cards to hide – indoors or out.
Then you’ll need to give your children a checklist.
If you go with the black and white version, your little ones can find and color!
That’s pretty much it – hide the cards and get finding!
Get Even More Out of This Dinosaur Scavenger Hunt
Here are some ways you could use this beyond the standard hide and find…
The Fossil Hunt
Instead of hiding them around the room/garden, you could hide the cards under a layer of something – scarves, sand, crumpled tissue paper, dried leaves etc.
Children would then have to excavate each card rather than simply spotting it, which could make it feel much more like they’re out on a dig.
You could even give them a brush and let them carefully uncover their finds like real fossil hunters!
Loose parts like pebbles, bark, or dried grass in the tray would be cool. And you could pair it with our printable dinosaur paper crowns.
Name That Dinosaur
Before any found card can be checked off, it has to be named out loud. Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Brachiosaurus. This turns the hunt into a vocabulary-building game.
Herbivore or Carnivore?
Once all eight cards are found and checked, the sorting begins. Lay the cards out and ask: plant-eater or meat-eater?
Children sort them into two groups, which can help spark a conversation about what each dinosaur ate and why. (The Triceratops, Brachiosaurus, Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus in this pack are all herbivores. The T. rex, velociraptor, Spinosaurus and plesiosaur were not.) Then they might want to try a little dinosaur math game, which keeps the prehistoric theme going with a little counting challenge.
The Clue Trail
Give your little learners some cluees to guide them. “The next dinosaur is somewhere cold” – near the refrigerator. “The next one is hiding somewhere you do your learning” – on the table.
The Mapmaker
After the hunt, give children a blank sheet of paper and ask them to draw a simple map showing where each dinosaur was hiding (you could always draw a rough birds’eye view of your play area with obvious landmarks pre-drawn).
Then they could just put a little x by where they think the dinos were hiding.
This is a lovely early spatial awareness activity and makes a great record of the expedition.
However you use this one, I hope it you all have some dino-fun!
Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!
