July Play Activity Ideas for Toddlers & Preschoolers + Free Play Calendar PDF

I'm putting together monthly play activity schedules to make it easy for you to create a month of fun for your kids at home or in the classroom, every month of the year. The July play calendar focuses on fireworks, shark, emotions and dinosaur themed ideas for toddlers, preschoolers and school kids. The activities include a mix of art and craft, sensory, science and play ideas as well as books to read aloud during the month.

Each activity is explained in detail below, including how you can extend or adjust the activity based on your child's age. You can also download our free interactive July activity calendar pdf with links to instructions for every activity to save for future reference.

Dinosaur Playdough Eggs

Do your kids love surprise eggs? I mean which kids don't really... If they also love dinosaurs then they'll love hatching playdough dinosaur eggs. There's so many fun ways to hatch dinosaur eggs, but playdough eggs are probably the easiest to make and to hatch. Plus they add a fun squishy, stretchy, sensory element.

Hatching playdough eggs is a fun sensory and fine motor activity rolled into one, plus it has the element of surprise that so many kids love. I'll show you exactly how to make playdough dinosaur eggs and how I set them up as an invitation to play. They'd also be a fun activity, or party favour idea, for a dinosaur themed kids party.

40+ Fun Dinosaur Play Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Dinosaurs tend to be an obsession for all kids - girls and boys - at some point in time. If you have a dino loving kid {or students} they'll love these hands-on dinosaur play ideas. I've put together a list of over 40 different fun ways to play with dinosaur figurines including hatching eggs, dinosaur sensory play, tinker trays, creating and digging for dinosaur fossils and how to create the perfect prehistoric small world.

These dinosaur activities are great for a dinosaur theme week during homeschooling or kindy, a dinosaur unit at school, or as fun activities to entertain kids at a dinosaur theme party. They're also perfect activities to foster imagination and learn more fun facts about these fascinating prehistoric creatures.

Dinosaur Egg Small World Sensory Play Tray

There seems to be many phases kids go through with toys as they're growing up, but one that's almost certain for both boys and girls is the dinosaur phase. When I was little this was all thanks to The Land Before Time cartoons. Little Foot, Petrie, Cera, Ducky and Spike were soooo cute I used to watch the movie and cartoons on repeat.

When I had my girls and they first started getting into animal figurines I thought dinosaurs would quickly become favourites, however it took them a little while to get interested. Once Dinosaur Train was on ABC Kids however they got into dinosaurs in a big way. Then when Dino Dana and Andy's Prehistoric Adventures were added it just cemented their love for dinosaurs and the history of them. We've done many dinosaur play activities now, but this Dinosaur Egg Small World Tray we did recently has been a firm favourite.

DINOSAUR EGG SMALL WORLD PLAY TRAY

Do you ever come up with awesome ideas at the most random of times? It happens to me all the time {probably because my brain never switches off}. This dinosaur small world idea popped into my head while I was cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast. I had an idea to do a dinosaur small world in the back of my mind for a while, but when I started cracking the eggs for breakfast it's like a light bulb suddenly went off in my head. 

Straight away I knew if I carefully cracked them right I could keep them and set up an awesome small world complete with real hatching eggs. So the rest of the eggs I cracked right down low near the base and carefully got the egg out then thoroughly rinsed them and put them aside. I wanted to set up a dinosaur nest loosely based on the intro to Dinosaur Train where Tiny, Shiny, Don and Buddy hatch out of the eggs as the theme song plays.