How to Make an Apatosaurus Diorama

A diorama illustrates how dinosaurs lived.

A diorama is an interesting way for students to show what they have learned about animals and their habitats. If your child has been learning about dinosaurs, his teacher may ask that he make a diorama to illustrate his understanding of the subject. With a shoe box and a few art supplies, your child can create a diorama that shows what he knows about the apatosaurus. He can even use it to teach his fellow classmates about this type of dinosaur.

Things You'll Need

• Empty shoe box
• Poster paint
• Large paintbrushes -- 2 to 3 inches wide
• Glue
• Brown sand
• Plastic trees
• Plastic plants
• Plastic apatosaurus toy

Instructions

1. Paint the grass inside your diorama using green poster paint and a paintbrush. Also apply green paint to the bottom and halfway up the sides of the inside of the box.

2. Paint the top half of the inside of your shoe box with blue poster paint, to illustrate the sky.

3. Allow the green and blue paint to dry for 1 to 2 hours.

4. Paint details onto the green and blue paint, such as clouds or volcanoes.

5. Paint blue paint over a small portion of the green paint to signal water. The apatosaurus lived near large lakes and rivers.

6. Use a paintbrush to brush glue all over the bottom surface of your box -- in a thin, even layer.

7. Sprinkle brown sand onto the glue, and allow it to dry completely, for 1 to 2 hours.

8. Glue plastic plants and trees that lived in the apatosaurus habitat -- such as ferns, pine trees and fir trees -- in various places inside your shoe box. Leave room for your dinosaur.

9. Demonstrate that the apatosaurus was a plant-eater by including examples of food in the diorama. Apatosaurus was a very tall dinosaur, so include tall trees and plants in the diorama. It also ate stones to help digest the food. Add small pebbles to illustrate this.

10. Glue your apatosaurus in a prominent spot inside your shoe box. Use a toy apatosaurus that is big enough to illustrate the fact that it was one of the largest types of dinosaur, yet is in proportion to the plants and trees used in the diorama.

11. Add plastic dinosaurs that lived in a similar habitat as the apatosaurus, such as a stegosaurus or camptosaurus.

Tips & Warnings

• Use washable poster paint, which will make cleanup easier.

• If you do not have an empty shoe box, any small cardboard box can be used instead.

• Use plastic bones, moss, small rocks and leaves to add details to the apatosaurus diorama.

• If you have trouble getting your plants, trees and dinosaurs to stand up, use hot glue in place of school glue.

• Provide books with pictures that show the apatosaurus to help your child determine what to paint inside the box, as well as where to put the plants and trees.

• Allow the paint and glue to dry completely before going on the next step in your diorama. This will prevent damage to your project.

• Put your child's diorama in a larger box to transport it. This will help protect the pieces from coming unglued and the box from getting broken.

References

• Instant Habitat Dioramas; Donald M. Silver and Patricia J. Wynne
• Puppet and Flannelboard Stories for Reading Readiness; Belinda Dunnick Karge
• Apatosaurus; Rupert Matthews