Ben’s been obsessed with dinosaurs for many months now.

Although he still has some problems pronouncing the long names like the hypsilophodon, tenontosaurus and euoplocephalus, (who wouldn’t?) thanks to the Flip-o-saurus I bought him, he’s learnt to invent names for dinosaurs using his imagination. This wacky book contains fantastic pictures and breaks dinos’ names up which allows the kid to mix and match their body parts to create their own make-belief dinosaurs.

The hardest part of this dino craze is having to explain the history of these prehistoric creatures to him, why they’ve become extinct, how these creatures are classified (saurischia, the lizard-hipped; ornithischia, the bird-hipped plant eaters; the long-necked ones, bipedal ones, bird-footed ones, armoured ones, and those with horns and shield around the skull).

It’s almost excruciating.

Because I want to encourage his curiosity, I also end up squinting and reading him The World of Dinosaurs, an encyclopedic guide to these prehistoric creatures A LOT, especially before bedtime, and having my tongue tied every minute of it.

In December, we had lots of counting and sorting fun with the dinosaur counters I bought from The Mind Store. I used the 108 mini dinos – the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Dimetrodon and Woolly Mammoth in various colours –  to teach classification, colour sorting, counting, sequencing, and simple addition and subtraction. It was a great deal of fun learning with these counters.

The boy also amassed a huge number of different dino figurines for his own pretend play since Christmas, both from the toy store and from those hatch-a-dino eggs. Dinosaurs (rubbery, slippery ones!) practically hatch and grow when you throw those eggs into water. It was thrilling for him to watch what would be hatched and even more amusing for us to hear him scream the name of the dino over a pail of water – Stegosaurus! T-rex! Pterodactyl! – like some pro.

I think I’ve learned so much about dinosaurs the last few months I should be given a Ph.D for it. And the boy? He’s still very much obsessed with these prehistoric giants so we threw him a dino-theme birthday party.

[To be continued…]