Introducing New Words

The folks over at the Dinosaur Train camp put together a rather interesting episode called "The Burrowers" featuring Oryctodromeus. The episode introduces words to the audience, intended of course to be children, like crepuscular, which is pretty fantastic. The assumption that children can learn some interesting and difficult scientific words like that, as well as enjoy a "hole" bunch of puns (it happens so often in the episode I could not resist if you told me to), shows a lot of faith in the intelligence of children. As usual, Scott Sampson's interaction with and explanation to the kids is concise, intelligent, and well suited to the kids watching the show. As with most Dinosaur Train episodes there are toys related to the episode that have been released; in this instance the company creating the toys is Tomy. For some rather confusing reason the description of Oryctodromeus on Tomy's site states that it is a carnivore; disregard that. Other kid friendly info sites exist as well, including PBS itself as well as the NHM in London. I have to say, at this point, we have used the NHM so much in finding information that kids can digest about their favorite dinosaurs quickly and easily, that the folks over there putting those fact sheets together have done a fantastic job and should be rewarded somehow despite the fact sheets not being glamorous or showy in any way. Coloring pages, however, I am sad to report do not really exist as such for this dinosaur. It would be a neat little dinosaur to color, but alas, there are none at this point.