Dinosaur Museum

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Do you have a person in your life who likes dinosaurs? Well.. I have this GREAT book for you today. Seriously, Lonely Planet Kids has done an amazing job with Build your Own Dinosaur Museum. In it you will find 5 prehistoric pop-ups to make and display. Loads of interesting facts pepper the pages as you uncrate dinosaur bones to build your very own dinosaurs.

From the Book Cover:

Calling all dinosaur experts! We need your help.
We have just received a crate of dinosaur fossils – and they need assembling! Fast! Can you find the right room for each skeleton and build them in time for the museum’s big opening? There are five pop-up dinosaurs to put back together, including a Triceratops, Stegosaurus and T-rex. It’s going to be roar some!

Lonely Planet’s Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum is an activity book with a difference, where you get to play chief paleontologist. The museum rooms are ready, but there aren’t any skeletons to display. It’s up to you to figure out which one is which and where they need to go.
Fun, interactive and with lots of facts to discover, this book is perfect for any dinosaur fan, budding biologist or model maker.

What you Get:

When I opened this hardcover book I discovered several pages in the front of the book that were taped securely closed. Being the curious duck that I am I immediately opened up the tape. By the way, the tape sticks over and over and over again. I tested it about 15 times and then my lad did a couple more times for good measure.

These pieces are colour coded and easy to tear out. They also give instructions so you know which page goes with what display page. The pieces have bends in them so once you put them in the book they will indeed pop-up. This is excellent for young dinosaur enthusiasts.

It does follow the evolutionary theory of the earth’s development, and how animals came into being. I find this is pretty normal with most dinosaur focused books. I learned many new facts like did you know there was a triceratops group? This is a group of dinosaurs with a similar head shape but the horn count was different! I learned how some dinosaurs found safety in numbers, and some dinosaurs were like ostriches…dependent upon their speed to elude predators.

Five of the pages were dedicated to the pop-ups, where-as other pages had spots for adding in interesting details, like this egg.

There are so many builds for the dinosaur enthusiast, they should be kept busy learning and playing for a good amount of time. The great thing is, the text is interesting enough they they’ll keep coming back to it to read it again.

The reader gets to learn about

What dinosaurs are
Triceratops
Dinosaur defense
Stegosaurus
Plant eaters
T-rex
Predators
Marine Reptiles
Liopleurodon
Flying Reptiles
Pleranodon
Where in the World?
End of an era

My Thoughts:

I am enamoured with this book, there is so much information, and so many things to keep busy hands well… busy, it’s just great! From a homeschoolers’ perspective this book would be an excellent addition to a dinosaur unit. Helping students to hone their attention on five specific dinosaurs and learn how they were put together. Big bones, small forearms, land moving, earth shakers, flyers and more.

This book is a perfect companion to Dinosaur Devotions that I reviewed last week. AND.. if you are a member of SchoolhouseTeachers there is a great dinosaurs and the bible program you could work through. Seriously, you should invest in it, it has so many programs that would be helpful to you and your students it’s amazing. BUT anyways, Build your Own Dinosaur Museum is a must have for the young dinosaur enthusiast in your home. It would make an excellent Christmas present don’t you think?

Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum
Jenny Jacoby
illustrator: Beatrice Blue
Lonely Planet Kids
6-8 years, hardcover, Pop-ups, Build your own
Dinosaurs, history, science, biology
Nature, how it works, archaeology

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Other dinosaur books for you to check into: