Kids’ fascination with dinosaurs

Published Aug 19, 2014

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Elspeth Mendes

When so much hype is generated that kids start vibrating with expectation, I bite the bullet, steal the tooth fairy money, make a feeble excuse to the boss, and head to Computicket.

The Days of the Dinosaur at the CTICC, largely sold out before it even opened its doors, is impressive.

Streams of dwarfs and their handlers have descended on the city centre over the past three weeks to get into the Jurassic zoo. The thrill is palpable. Excitement uncontained.

There are five 45-robotic-dino kits that travel around the world. One is in Paris (check out them out on Facebook to compare). Only one technician is left on each site to manage the action.

Under exaggerated coloured lights, lizardly tail-wagging, heaving (my favourite), screechy groans, massive toothy grins (I wonder how much the tooth fairy pays them for a dubious piece of ivory) and trembling front paws (electric tick?) the devil is in the detail.

Too much detail, really, for a child to understand. I can’t even pronounce the names of these prehistoric creatures, unlike my son Wazi, 9, who could have volunteered as a guide for the 4000m² exhibition.

They tried guides at the Jozi show, but it became too haphazard, so the organisers structured school group guides with a five-minute interlude for the morning sessions. Not recommened for grumpy oldies.

I didn’t see any child standing still long enough to listen to the info on the info boards, and the taped audio guide (at an additional R35 after already paying R95 a kid and R140 an adult) was a bit too dry and factual. Funky facts like the T. rex eating four schoolkids in a swallow with its nasty 30cm teeth, are the morsels treasured.

Some dinos didn’t feature on the gadget at all – which is a sad moment if it’s your favourite and one you do want to know a bit more about. Some “life-size” dinos seemed quite short.

The 3D movie was spectacular.

Way over the top scientific for most littlies, the time-capsule cruise conveys the astonishing space of time before life appeared on Earth and the slow progress from Big Bang, to algae, to bacteria, to “fish”, to amphibians and eventually the dinosaurs.

The representation of time passed is cleverly done with squares on sheets of paper filling the floor space of a room – we are the last tiny square. One little block compared to pages of history. The current rulers of the planet also being the most destructive ever with the capacity to annihilate the bit of nature that is left.

Kids love interaction – and video games. Extra two points. Fossil-find sandpit, with attendants too bored to be bothered to hide the “bones” excavated by eager beach bunnies, face paint at R40 for a squiggle on the corner of the eyebrow, photos with T. rex(I’m devastated that we lost ours) or dino eggs (R50-R65), a dino-ride (R20) so slow a child might fall asleep before reaching the other side (we were expecting high-powered adrenaline), tracing stencils – many kids have compulsive repetitive syndrome, so one Galliminus in every colour of the crayon pallet (there are 48) is just not enough to step aside to give another a chance.

Event manager Edmund Beukes says the final figures are not yet in, but at least 130 schools from Cape Town came to the show, with 20 to 300 kids from each school. The best day was in Jozi with some 4 000 visitors. You do the maths and work out the money.

But here’s the honey.

Coca-Cola sponsored five township schools (about 200 pupils) to go to see the show. Langa’s Zimasa Community School, Range Primary School (Elsies River) and Wesfleur Primary (Atlantis) are heading there this morning. The other two schools that benefited were Accordian Primary (Belhar) and Matroosfontein Primary. Some 400 kids were sponsored for the Jozi show.

Kids have a fascination with dinosaurs. Perhaps they are still more closely connected to the spirit world of ancestry and shared space.

Let’s hope they can save the world.

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