Make A Dinosaur Model:
Crafts With Paper Mache

See how to make a dinosaur! You will learn the techniques which you can use to build your own statue and get to grips with fantastic dinosaur crafts.

This homeschool Velociraptor model is made by my daughter Catherine age 13 with help from her Dad.

You'll be pleased to know you can make your dinosaur model nearly for free!

make a dinosaur Velociraptor
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And you'll end up with the most fabulous dinosaur ever!

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You can see a video of Catherine making her dinosaur with paper mache here:

Make a Velociraptor

Build a dinosaur model

Luckily, this dinosaur model only uses four simple materials.

You'll need:

  • Polyboard (a light foam board that friends often seem to donate!)
  • Bubble wrap and masking tape
  • Stuff to make our paper mache recipe
  • Modeling clay and acrylic paint

Dinosaurs For Kids

If your kids love dinosaurs, you've come to the right place!

You'll find ideas for all ages starting with:

make dinosaur robots from trash

Velociraptor Dinosaur

The first place to start is to pick the dinosaur you want to make.

After Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor is the world's most famous meat eating dinosaur.

You may know Velociraptors from Jurassic Park - but if so you're in for a shock.

Hollywood decided to add some artistic licence and base their version on the much bigger (and more fierce-looking) Deinonychus...but they thought you'd find that too hard to pronounce.

So the beast you are looking at if you want to follow Catherine's homeschool model is the real Velociraptor.

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Once you've decided on your dinosaur you need to find out all you can about him!

You can find out lots of facts and some pictures of him on Wikipedia.

dinosaur picture

If you're looking for kid-friendly Velociraptor facts, you'll find them on kids-dinosaurs.com.

kids dinosaurs com website

What you'll find out is that you're looking to make a model that is 6.8 foot long.

A bit too big to fit in the living room!

And you'll probably find that whatever statue you choose to build you'll need to scale them down a bit.

The next problem you've got is deciding what your dinosaur looked like!

Velociraptor sketch on Wikipedia

Above is the way Velociraptors look according to Wikipedia.

You'll see a slight problem - Wikipedia shows that Velociraptors had feathers!

Catherine decided that was a bit too hard for her but there's no reason you couldn't have a go.

You're always allowed to make a few design modifications of your own!

Materials To Build Your Own Dinosaur

The first thing to say is that if you want to make a dinosaur you can do it nearly for free.

The only thing that really cost money were his eyes.

dinosaur eye

This is a crocodile eye which we bought on the internet from a taxidermy supplier.

We thought crocodiles were probably the closest we could get to Velociraptors!

These are the materials you will need to make a dinosaur:

dinosaur outline

One

  • Polyboard (a light foam board - ask your friends at work - they often seem to have spare pieces to donate to worthy projects!)

This will make the structure and skeleton of your dinosaur.

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Two

  • Bubble wrap and masking tape

Bubble wrap you can get from spare packaging material.

You will use this to bulk out your body.  The masking tape holds the bubble wrap.

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Three

  • Toilet paper, Elmer's (pva) glue, joint compound (polyfiller), linseed oil

We love homeschool paper mache projects and these materials will make the paper mache clay which you will sculpt to form the body.

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Four

  • Modeling clay, cocktail sticks for teeth and claws and Acrylic paint for painting

You can choose to color your dinosaur any way you want!

How To Build Your Dinosaur

Find out how to make a dinosaur Velociraptor in:

Part Two: How To Build A Dinosaur

finished Velociraptor dinosaur model

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