Little Hands Learning | Prehistoric Box

 “A monthly subscription box, inspired by the love of books.”

Every month, we look forward to our Little Hands Learning box arriving on the doorstep and every month, I wonder if it’ll be better than the last! We have genuinely loved every single box – one-off boxes as well as our subscription – and a soon as I found the theme of the February box, I knew we would love it.

Alfie is still dino mad, so the book The Beasts Beneath our Feet by James Carter and Alisa Kosareva was always going to be a winner. That’s right, this box had a prehistoric theme. We really enjoyed reading the prehistoric poem together – even, as Alfie said, the tricky words! The illustrations were fantastic and so vivid. The words were descriptive and gave us an opportunity to talk about the different beasts further – with some facts thrown in too.

The activities included in this box were:

• A dinosaur dig
• Sand art
• Create your own prehistoric bug
• Woolly mammoth-inspired artwork

Dig, dig, dig…

Alfie received the Galt Dino Lab for Christmas, which featured a dinosaur dig with plaster – so I knew he would love this reusable activity, which would be a little simpler. I think he was excited most about the different colours of sand: yellow, blue and green. He hadn’t even noticed the dinosaurs hiding in two of the pouches, so when I mentioned that, he wanted to open them as soon as possible.

We started with the blue sand – I poured it out into a paint tray, doing my best to hide the dinosaur. Alfie then carefully used the paintbrush to remove the sand and reveal the dino. Once he found the dinosaur, he continued making patterns in the sand before asking to do it again. We then repeated the activity with the yellow sand. The pterodactyl was much harder to hide, because of its wings

The dinosaurs were then added to his mammoth collection, and we carefully kept all of the sand for the next activity…

Time to layer up!

The opposite of digging for dinosaurs, next we buried a dinosaur in the sand. Thankfully, we finished a jar (of salted caramel spread) on Pancake Day, so used that and Alfie thoroughly enjoyed layering up the different colours of sand. We actually found another old dinosaur to use, so put that in the jar – but it ended up being hidden and not seen through the jar.

Alfie simply poured the sand from the pouch straight into the jar, adding each colour in different measurements to create the layers. I was hoping to find a funnel to use, but it ended up being effective straight from the pouch – a lot easier than using a spoon, that’s for sure. The finished jar looks fantastic, I’m sure you’ll agree!

A mammoth activity

We were so pleased to get another set of the watercolour paints, as they’re such good quality and last a really long time. We did the woolly mammoth artwork together, as there were two sheets of card included in the box.

Alfie painted a lovely scene – first he said it was a sunset, then it was an asteroid – and I painted some mountains. Once both sheets were dry, I combined them, cutting out my artwork and sticking it onto Alfie’s and then stuck the woolly mammoth silhouettes on. He even added some dinosaur stickers.

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As always, we really enjoyed the box – both the book and the activities, and can’t wait for the March box to arrive. In celebration of World Book Day, which was today, Little Hands Learning are offering a 20% discount on all one-off boxes. Enter code WBD at checkout but be quick as this offer ends on Sunday. Please be aware, my brand rep discount code won’t be valid during this time, but of course, if you make a purchase after Sunday, you can use LUCYLOCKET and add in the notes, you came via my blog (or social channels).

Follow Little Hands Learning on Instagram for sneak peeks of future boxes, plus lots of educational ideas, fun crafts, and experiments.

Love, Lucy xx