CHILDREN have celebrated the start of the half-term school holiday by making puppets of dinosaurs.

The Museum of Natural History, in Parks Road, Oxford, held activities for families yesterday after reopening at the weekend.

Christopher Petersen, eight, and his mother Yan visited the museum during a three-week trip to Britain from China.

Christopher said: “I had a nice day with the dinosaurs. I was just walking around and thought it was really cool, particularly the big T-Rex skeleton.

“We also felt some gem stones and they were really, really smooth.”

As well as designing finger puppets, the youngsters also made Dodo masks, before the day concluded with a talk about the exhibition in the lecture theatre.

Mrs Petersen said: “We found out the museum had reopened after making renovations so we popped in to have a look around.

“There were a lot of family activities for the whole afternoon and there were lots of kids there. The staff were really helpful and friendly.

“We saw some birds, insects and live cockroaches, as well as lots of fish.

“It was very interesting. ”