The in-school dinosaur field trip · A K–5 dinosaur science assembly
Four dinosaurs take over your school for a day. And one of them walks.
Grades K–5
Full school day
I bring everything
No buses. No permission slips. No headcount in a parking lot. Your students get the
museum day without leaving the building. A curriculum-based science program built for
K–5, with real fossils in their hands, a five-foot raptor over my shoulder, and a
robotic triceratops that walks right off the stage and into the crowd.
Cris Johnson·Over 20 years full-time·200+ shows a year·NY, PA, OH, CT, MA & NJ
For the principal reading over a teacher’s shoulder
Yes, this is a real science program.
Curriculum-based, grade-appropriate, and built around objects your students actually
handle. The spectacle is how we hold them. The science is why it is worth the day.
Real fossilsTeeth, claws and a skull — passed around, not behind glass
Curriculum-basedPaleontology, eras, and how fossils reveal behavior
Grade-appropriatePitched differently for K–2 than for 3–5
Every child closeClass rotations, so nobody watches from forty feet back
Field trips are wonderful. Field trip logistics are a nightmare.
Buses to charter. Permission slips to chase. Insurance to check. A per-head cost that
climbs every year, and a whole day of instruction lost to a coach park.
So bring the field trip to them instead.
This in-school field trip turns your gym, cafeteria or library into a dinosaur exhibit for a day.
Your students walk down the hall and they are in the Cretaceous. Nobody signs anything.
Nobody gets on a bus.
And unlike a museum, the exhibit comes to them. At a museum your students look at
a skeleton behind a rope. Here they hold the fossil.
See it in action
Two minutes is quicker than reading.
Jurassic Journeys — the show in two minutes
Schools and libraries, summer 2026 — hover to pause
The cast
Four Dinosaurs Visit Your Students. Each one bigger than the last.
First, the thing every principal is too polite to ask: these are not cheesy
puppets. Every dinosaur in this show is startlingly lifelike — textured
skin, real weight, and eyes that find a child in the third row and stay there. Nobody in
your gym ends up politely pretending.
And there is a reason the show is built in this order. The children work out the rules,
and then the rules break.
First out
Baby Stegosaurus
Meet Gozer
Close enough for the front row to see him breathe. The children settle in.
24 inches
Second
Baby Tyrannosaur
Meet Gamera
Same size. By now they have it figured out — dinosaurs are small, and they fit in my arms.
24 inches
The moment the room flips
Five-Foot Velociraptor
Meet Steve
Five feet of lifelike raptor, riding on my shoulder. The second he
appears the room forgets it had rules — and it is loud because of what
came before.
5 feet — 2.5× the babies
The babies were never the show. The babies were the setup.
And then the stage is not big enough
Penelope Dinohausen, the robotic triceratops.
Four and a half feet of robotic triceratops. She walks. She jumps. She roars. She
blinks and looks around the room like she is deciding something. She shakes hands.
Up close she holds up too — the detail is still convincing at three feet, which
is exactly where most of your students end up standing.
And she does not stay at the front. She walks into the audience, down
between the rows, close enough that a whole class can see her breathe.
Walks
Jumps
Roars
Blinks
Shakes hands
No screen. No projector. No “imagine if.” A dinosaur walks through your gym.
A still from the vet film — a shot of her walking a gym aisle would be better
Worth two minutes of anybody's day
Penelope goes to the vet
A robotic triceratops gets a full check-up — and everybody keeps a straight face
Then I reach into a paper lunch sack and pull out an eight-foot dinosaur bone.
Twenty years of doing this, and that one still gets a reaction I can feel through the floor.
The curriculum bit your principal will ask about
It looks like a spectacle. It teaches like a STEM lesson.
Every dinosaur in this show is a way into the science. Ten things your students come away with:
The competing theories for how the dinosaurs went extinct
Herbivores, carnivores and omnivores — and how you tell
Why dinosaurs laid so many eggs
Herbivore eggs versus carnivore eggs
How Tyrannosaurus rex actually hunted
Why Stegosaurus had those bony plates
The movies were wrong — what velociraptors were really like
How a fossil is formed in the first place
How paleontologists use deductive reasoning to work out the rest
The real size of most dinosaurs
Hands on, not sat down
Your students are actively involved. All of them.
Not a demonstration with three helpers while the rest of the school watches from the
floor. The science happens to the room. Specifically, this is what happens:
A groupKids become plants and treesand act out how the dinosaurs went extinct.
EveryoneThe whole room gets on its feetfor a balancing exercise that shows why a dinosaur needed that long tail.
A groupKids become prey animalsto work out how Tyrannosaurus rex hunted.
One studentOne volunteer becomes the preywhile we show what raptor pack hunting really looked like.
VolunteersStudents hold the real thing— giant fossil footprints, a Tyrannosaurus skull, stegosaurus plates and more.
Hands on the actual objects. That is the difference between a lesson they sat through and
a lesson they tell their parents about at dinner.
How it works
One full day. Every class. Nobody at the back.
The full-day field trip
Classes rotate through, a class or grade at a time
In a whole-school assembly, the back row is forty feet from a two-foot stegosaurus. They
see a shape.
In rotations, every single child in your building gets close — close
enough to see the grain on a fossil, close enough to be right there when Penelope walks
past. That is the whole point of this show, and it is why I built it this way.
30–45 min per classAll dayGym, cafeteria or libraryNo stage needed
Only have one assembly slot? Call me. I also run this as a single whole-school dinosaur school assembly
and it still lands. But if your schedule can take the full day, take the full day —
it is a genuinely better experience for your students and I would rather tell you that
than sell you the smaller one.
End of year
The centerpiece of your school field day.
If you run a field day or an end-of-year celebration, this slots straight in. I schedule
30-minute presentations through the day and bring dinosaur games between them —
Dino-Toss, ring toss and others — so each block runs a full hour.
Kids rotate through, the games keep the energy up between shows, and the dinosaurs are the
thing everyone photographs.
Fast set-up, and I work around your bell schedule, not the other way round.
Your gym, cafeteria or library is fine. No stage needed.
No deposits. Ever.
The no-risk part
If your students aren’t amazed, you don’t pay — and I donate $500 to your school.
Over 20 years of full-time performing, not one school has ever taken me up on it.
Proof
What schools and libraries say about the dinosaurs.
“Very professional! Great programs. Everyone has a blast! We have had him at our library 4 times now and it’s been great every time!”
Ann SiejkaChildren’s Librarian Lewiston Public Library, Lewiston, NY
“Cris came to the Branchport Library to present Jurassic Journeys as the finale to our UnEarth a Story summer program. What an amazing event! The children were invited to help out throughout the performance. Every part of the program was perfectly executed. After the meet and greet with the dinosaurs, the kids enjoyed the games which had been set up. Thank you Cris for a fantastic end to our summer programming.”
Pamela SimmonsChildren’s Librarian Branchport Public Library, Branchport, NY
“What a wonderful show! Our library kids absolutely loved the show! The animatronics were so engaging and really sparked the kids’ interest. He’s always hilarious while being educational. We can’t wait to have him back again next year.”
Yelena KislerLibrary Director Barbara Moscato Brown Memorial Library, Emporium, PA
“Wow! Best show! Entertaining! Informative! Great props! Kids and adults enjoyed. Thanks Cris!”
Kelly PaganelliChildren’s Librarian Mendon Public Library, Honeoye Falls, NY
“Cris Johnson did his Jurassic Journeys show for our Summer Reading Program and the kids absolutely loved it! It was very interactive, entertaining and educational — which is exactly what libraries love! It was hilarious hearing the laughter over the baby dinosaurs misbehaving. We look forward to seeing what he has to offer for next year’s Summer Reading!”
Jasmine SimsChildren’s Librarian Hornell Public Library, Hornell, NY
“The way that Cris relates to kids is simply unbelievable! I’ve never seen anyone do a better job during an assembly. He was FANTASTIC!”
Mrs. MorganTeacher Stetson Elementary, Colorado Springs, CO
“The students, without a doubt, were mesmerized by his talents! We highly recommend this fascinating program to all schools.”
Deborah GuestSchool Counselor Taylor Elementary, Norfolk, VA
“The quick pace was great to keep everyone’s interest and the kids loved being able to actively participate. That was great that you were able to include so many student participants.”
Jaime JacobSpecial Education Teacher Parkdale Elementary, East Aurora, NY
“Very professional! Great programs. Everyone has a blast! We have had him at our library 4 times now and it’s been great every time!”
Ann SiejkaChildren’s Librarian Lewiston Public Library, Lewiston, NY
“Cris came to the Branchport Library to present Jurassic Journeys as the finale to our UnEarth a Story summer program. What an amazing event! The children were invited to help out throughout the performance. Every part of the program was perfectly executed. After the meet and greet with the dinosaurs, the kids enjoyed the games which had been set up. Thank you Cris for a fantastic end to our summer programming.”
Pamela SimmonsChildren’s Librarian Branchport Public Library, Branchport, NY
“What a wonderful show! Our library kids absolutely loved the show! The animatronics were so engaging and really sparked the kids’ interest. He’s always hilarious while being educational. We can’t wait to have him back again next year.”
Yelena KislerLibrary Director Barbara Moscato Brown Memorial Library, Emporium, PA
“Wow! Best show! Entertaining! Informative! Great props! Kids and adults enjoyed. Thanks Cris!”
Kelly PaganelliChildren’s Librarian Mendon Public Library, Honeoye Falls, NY
“Cris Johnson did his Jurassic Journeys show for our Summer Reading Program and the kids absolutely loved it! It was very interactive, entertaining and educational — which is exactly what libraries love! It was hilarious hearing the laughter over the baby dinosaurs misbehaving. We look forward to seeing what he has to offer for next year’s Summer Reading!”
Jasmine SimsChildren’s Librarian Hornell Public Library, Hornell, NY
“The way that Cris relates to kids is simply unbelievable! I’ve never seen anyone do a better job during an assembly. He was FANTASTIC!”
Mrs. MorganTeacher Stetson Elementary, Colorado Springs, CO
“The students, without a doubt, were mesmerized by his talents! We highly recommend this fascinating program to all schools.”
Deborah GuestSchool Counselor Taylor Elementary, Norfolk, VA
“The quick pace was great to keep everyone’s interest and the kids loved being able to actively participate. That was great that you were able to include so many student participants.”
Jaime JacobSpecial Education Teacher Parkdale Elementary, East Aurora, NY
Scrolling on its own — hover to stop it and read one
Who is bringing the dinosaurs
You are booking me, not an agency.
I am Cris Johnson. I have performed school assemblies full time for over 20 years, more
than 200 dates a year, across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut and
Massachusetts. When you call the number on this page, I answer it. When the day arrives,
I am the one who walks in with the dinosaurs.
I built Jurassic Journeys because in-school programming should be able to compete with a
real field trip, not apologize for replacing one. Every fossil in this show is real, every
science point is checked, and the whole thing is aimed squarely at K–5 curiosity.
20+ years full time, not a side business
200+ school and library dates a year
6 states served, every week of term
$500 guarantee behind every booking
Take it to your team
Everything you need to get a yes.
Most assemblies are decided by a committee. Here is what to forward, print, and put on the
staffroom wall.
That is my cell. Call it, or fill in the form and I will send Jurassic Journeys information
straight back.
I perform over 200 school assemblies and in-school field trips a year across New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the spring dates go first.
Tell me your date
I reply personally, usually the same day.
Not sure about the budget yet? Try the free
School Assembly Fund Finder —
it finds the grants and community sources most schools never think to ask.
Cris Johnson's Amazing School Assemblies · Niagara Falls, NY ·
(716) 940-8963 Serving New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts & New Jersey
