Celebrating Dinovember: Fun with dinosaurs for kids! - MaisonBattat

Celebrating Dinovember: Fun with dinosaurs for kids!

What the heck is Dinovember?!

Dinovember is a trend sweeping across the households of dino lovers from coast to coast. Invented by two parents in Kansas City, Missouri, Dinovember celebrates the ‘coming to life’ of dinosaur figurines after dark. Making mischief around the house, this is the time of year when kids wake up to find their favorite toys removed, repositioned, and relocated. Similar to Elf on a Shelf, Dinovember offers your kids the opportunity to experience some magic and whimsy with their beloved toys!
Involve your kids in the household tidying by staging messiness and accidents from their dinosaur toys. Maybe it was the dinosaur learning toy who ripped up someone’s homework, and not the dog. Or maybe miniature dinosaur figurines spilled cereal on the counter. Or perhaps that dust bunny in the corner is courtesy of your favorite extinct playmates!

Dinovember doesn’t only take place in living rooms and playrooms… your local library or museum may be participating! From Santa Cruz, California to Shreverport, Louisiana, public institutions across the country are rallying around Dinovember to promote early literacy and teach kiddos more about the long-gone beasts that used to rule the planet.

Another way to celebrate Dinovember is to bring your kiddos into the wonderful world of these majestic prehistoric beasts. When your little one finds a dinosaur causing a ruckus in the laundry room, what better time to uncover some dinosaur history?!

Dinovember goes waaaaaaaay back... to the Cretaceous period!

Dinovember is also inspired by real life dinosaurs that walked the earth. Imagine that a giant Triceratops or T-rex walking across your own backyard millions and millions of years ago! Speaking of dinosaurs, lately, we’ve been ultra obsessed with the Pachyrhinosaurus, a close relative of the Triceratops with large forehead horns. Its name translates to “thick-nosed lizard.” They lived during the Late Cretaceous period in North America, largely in Canada and Alaska. They were herbivores that traveled in herds and used their horns for self-defense. They could grow up to 8 meters long and weigh up to 4 tons! They would put today’s vegans to shame😉

Horseshoe Canyon is the original site of Dinovember? Where even is that?!

Okay, okay – hold your horseshoes! Dinovember’s true roots go back to Horseshoe Canyon. Horseshoe Canyon is in Dinosaur Provincial Park – we weren’t kidding when we said it was the world capital of dinosaurs. It is one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur fossils found on earth. Over 60 different species of dinosaur fossils have been found in Dinosaur Park! Part of what makes the area so abundant in fossils is how the weather following the Cretaceous period preserved the dinosaur remains.

They happily co-existed with many other dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, including some headliner names you may recognize, including Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex (the perfect trifecta of dinosaurs to wreak some havoc in the bathroom, perhaps?!) They’re thought to have lived in the Horseshoe Canyon near Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, which is known as the world capital of dinosaurs! Although the area is quite dry now, it was once a tropical region that had the ideal conditions for dinosaur life, including lots of other creatures and lots of plant diversity.
Freshwater from storms washed the dinosaur bones into lakes and rivers, which would have preserved the fossils much better than being in open air. Dust and dirt swept in from the mountains would have covered the remains, securing them under layers of rock and protecting them from further decay. Thanks to this weather cycle, we know of dozens of species that lived in Horseshoe Canyon, and have learned much more about them, including what periods they were from, what they ate, what their skeletal structures were like, and how big they were.

Up next... dino-mite dino scenes!

We can thank places like Dinosaur Park for our vast knowledge of dinosaurs but would any of that matter if we didn’t have a toy Stegosaurus to hide in our kids’ cereal boxes?! Maybe Horseshoe Canyon and Dinosaur Park will inspire your next Dinovember scene in the sandbox!
Are you inspired to participate in Dinovember? Let us know how your dino scenes play out on our Instagram or TikTok by tagging us @terrabybattat.