Cereal Box T-Rex Statue

When little kids think dinosaurs they of course think of T-Rex first. So for dinosaur week we had to do something where we made our own T-Rex!

Before crafting we learned a few things about the tyrannosaurus rex (some of them are well known facts, but to 4 year old Big Brother it was great information and mostly new.) 

A Few T-Rex Facts (from the Usborne Book of Dinosaurs)

• T-Rex dinosaurs are meat eaters, or carnivores. They ate other dinosaurs and sometimes scavenged. 

• They were so heavy they could probably only run for short distances at a time. 

• Its hands only had two little claws. 

• Its teeth had edges like saws. 

After reading we started our project. I drew a T-Rex body, legs, and arms separately onto the back of a cereal box. I did it in pencil first so I could make changes as needed. Once I liked how it looked I traced over the lines with a thin permanent marker. I added small lines where I planned to cut into the pieces so they could lock together. I made a second set using the same process because Little Brother also seemed interested in the project.

We used our washable poster paints and worked to fill in the pieces. Little Brother painted for a few moments, and then lost interest. So I got to take over painting the second dinosaur. 

Big Brother started with painting his solid colors, but over time he mixed the colors. Afterwards we both worked to paint in lines and dots onto the bodies, arms, and legs. 

We let the paint dry for a couple of hours. Once dry I cut out the pieces, including the small straight lines used to link the pieces together. I lined up the lines and slid the pieces together. It took a little wiggling once they were hooked together, but then we were able to get them to stand up.

They currently are decorating, or stalking, our kitchen table!