Toy Review by Tiffany – Dino Meal

Save the eggs before the dinosaur eats them!

A hungry T-Rex is very protective of the eggs it has collected for its next delicious Dino Meal. Your job is to sneak those eggs out of the nest without getting caught. Novita kid Tiffany says you have to be very quiet otherwise the dinosaur will wake up and ROAR! Here’s Tiff’s review of the Dino Meal game.

What’s in the Dino Meal game box?

5 blue eggs
5 red eggs
5 green eggs
5 yellow eggs
Dinosaur
Dinosaur nest base
Tweezers
Die
Instruction sheet

(2 AA batteries are required but are not included.)

How To Play Dino Meal game

A hungry T-Rex is guarding its next Dino Meal of eggs, but has fallen asleep. You need to roll the die to choose which egg should to be rescued from him first.

If you roll the die and it lands on red, you need to collect a red egg. If you roll a blue, you need to collect a blue egg, and so on.

There are two special sides of the die. If you roll the die and it lands on white, you get to miss a turn. If you roll the rainbow coloured side of the die, you get to choose which coloured egg you rescue.

Sneak into the egg pile with your Dino Tweezers and start your egg raid, but be careful that the dinosaur doesn’t wake up whilst you’re there!

The game continues until there is only one player left who didn’t get caught by the T-Rex. This player is the winner of the game.

Therapeutic Benefits of Dino Meal game

Playing a game like Dino Meal requires patience, being able to take turns, agreeing to and sticking to the rules, and being a good friend – whether you escape the dinosaur’s jaw or not.

The Dino Meal game can teach kids how to be a good friend under pressure, how to deal with excitement appropriately, and how important it is to wait your turn – if you don’t, you may be the one who gets bitten by the T-Rex! The game is great for building social skills too which can be used in many multi-player games, like taking turns, following the rules, and being a good winner or loser.

For kids, Dino Meal is all about understanding how to regulate their emotions. For example, if you don’t express your excitement appropriately when you win, those around you may get annoyed and no longer wish to play with you. Instead, show off your best-friend skills and say “hey, that was a really great game!” when someone else loses.

The Dino Meal game builds on other important skills too, like matching colours, counting, and being able to remember to roll the dice before picking an egg – this skill is called ‘sequencing’ and is used in everyday life to break down an event into simple steps and put those steps in order. For example, when recounting a story you need a beginning, middle and end.

Dino Meal is a great way for kids to develop their pinch grip too, as they will need to practice controlling the tweezers to collect the eggs. This is an important skill for getting dressed (in particular buttons and zippers), eating with cutlery, and being able to control a pen or pencil to draw or write.

Dino Meal can be used by kids aged 4 and up. If you find the game is too hard, Dino Meal can be simplified by removing the dice and choosing any egg, or by removing the tweezers and rescuing the eggs with your hands or another creative way. Older kids may find Dino Meal too easy. If this is the case, you can create additional rules, like using your non-dominant hand to rescue the eggs, adding a time limit or increasing the distance between the player and the eggs to make the game more challenging!

Make Your Own Dino Meal game!

If you can’t visit one of our metropolitan or regional offices to borrow Dino Meal, you could always make your own version at home!

Get your child to create their own die with our downloadable dice template. They will need to colour in 1 side blue, 1 side red, 1 green, 1 yellow, leave 1 white, and colour in 1 side like a rainbow. Once that’s done, cut out the shape of the die and glue the flaps together to create the die.

Next step – find some tweezers and pom-poms or cotton balls to use as eggs. Colour in 5 cotton balls blue, 5 cotton balls red, 5 green and 5 yellow. We’ve found coloured textas work best to give the cotton balls some colour.

Now the real fun begins! Find a plastic bottle, milk carton, tin-can or cup and decorate it to look like a dinosaur. There’s plenty of inspiration to make a dinosaur from recycled materials on Pinterest – so get creative!

Now that you’ve got your homemade die, tweezers, eggs and dinosaur, you’re ready to play!

Because your newly created dino won’t be able to bite like in the Dino Meal game, you’ll have to change the rules slightly. Instead of rescuing the eggs, you’ll now roll the die and use the tweezers to feed your dinosaur!

Make the game competitive and see who can feed their dinosaur the most! In this version of the game, you don’t want to roll a white. If you roll a white, you’ll miss a turn and someone else may feed their dino more than you!

Helpful Information