Dinosaur Train embraces and celebrates the fascination that preschoolers have with both dinosaurs and trains while sparking an interest in life science, natural history, and paleontology. The show encourages children to compare the characteristics of ancient animals with those that are alive today. As they explore a variety of interesting animals past and present, children develop the inquiry skills and core knowledge needed to help them think, talk and act like scientists.

Celebrate winter with the awesome dinosaurs in this Dinosaur Train! video. Throughout eight different episodes, the Pteranodon kids, Tiny, Shiny, Don, and Buddy learn about a wide variety of topics: snow, winter solstice, coniferous trees, nocturnal animals, fossils, throwing a surprise party, Mother's Day, and of course...dinosaurs! The always-helpful Conductor continues to teach them about dinosaurs and the prehistoric era; "I couldn't help but hear your questions so, I can't help but answer them!" There is also plenty of repetition of the dinosaur names and other more technical words, so your child has plenty of opportunities to hear it pronounced corrected, and try to say it along with the characters.

Buddy (the toddler T-Rex) demonstrates in each episode how to make a hypothesis, then the rest of the characters help him test each hypothesis. Perhaps your little one would also like to make an educated guess about why something is the way it is! Your child can sing and dance along with the characters when the snow starts falling, boogie with the Conductor's song about being nocturnal, and rock and roll with King Cryolophasaurus' song about the crest on his forehead, Dinosaur Train is also great about adding humor for children throughout the episodes, whether it's Don's silly dancing, Mom Pternondon's childish excitement over winter solstice, the Northern Troodons' Canadian accents, or King Cryolophosaurus' obvious Elvis inspiration.

My three year-old friend, Sam, (A huge dinosaur fan!) was captivated by all of the episodes, but "Night Train" seemed to have made the biggest impact. The night after watching that episode, Sam asked if he could ride on the Night Train soon. He also asked if he had 'night shine', which makes nocturnal animals' eyes glow, or shine, in the dark. I told Sam 'no' on the eye shine, but thought he would be excited to hear that his dog has it. Sam sighed in response and said, "Well, when I'm older then."

--Audra

Dinosaur Train: Dinosaurs in the Snow episodes include:

Dinosaurs in the Snow - Buddy and his Pteranodon family ride the Dinosaur Train to the North Pole - where it's cooler, and the skies are dark all winter long!;

Night Train - Dad, Buddy and Tiny take a special ride on the Dinosaur Train at night, learning about animals that are active after dark, culminating at the Big Pond for a nature walk under the full moon;

Fossil Fred - Buddy, Tiny and Don play "detective" and search around the Big Pond for fossils. The kids end up finding an entire skeleton of a Jurassic dinosaur;

King Cryolophosaurus - Buddy, Tiny, Don and Mom meet a reclusive, singing dinosaur named King who has a big swooping crest on his head and a voice that sounds an awful lot like Elvis Presley;

Dinosaur Block Party - The Pteranodon family hosts a block party to introduce their new neighbors, the Lambeosaurus family, to all the other neighborhood creatures;

Buddy's Surprise Birthday Party - Shiny, Tiny and Don throw a surprise party for Buddy on the Dinosaur Train and invite a whole caboose full of his friends!;

Mom's Day - The kids go to the Big Pond to look for flowers to give to Mom on her special Mothers Day; and

Cretaceous Conifers - The whole Pteranodon family have fun celebrating Mom's favorite holiday, Winter Solstice.

I personally love the fun songs and music that the show has as well as all the great learning it provides. My son loves trying to say the names of the different dinosaurs and we learn lots of neat facts from this video. One reason I picked this was because if featured snow. We are in the middle of winter so I thought it would be fun. There is also a episode on this DVD about coniferous trees and why they don't loose their needles but all the other trees loose their leaves.

--Kristina, Holland, MI