Digging for Prehistoric projects

 

This month, as you may know from my previous blog post, we are studying Dinosaurs. I thought I might share with you lovely readers some of the fun dino-related, hands-on projects we've done.

One of the kids' new favorite repeat activities is 'digging for dinos' in rice. I put a few pounds of leftover rice from a huge bulk sack into a bin, then put that onto a tarp on the kitchen floor. I used the tarp on the kitchen floor because I figured if any rice left the bin it would be easier to pour it back in from the tarp. And if any left the tarp, the kitchen floor is the easiest to sweep. Then I buried several dinosaur toys into it and told the kids that they were paleontologists (that's one of our vocabulary words) and they had to find the dinos.

 T-rex was the easiest to find, as he was the biggest.

 I had the toddlers involved in this project, and they LOVED it, but I had to make them take turns.

 They reburied and unburied those guys for an hour!

 

After they were done, I had them pull out the puppet theater (also mentioned in a previous post) and tell me a story about the dinosaurs. The 3 older kids worked together to come up with a story to tell the toddlers first.

 It was about the 3 Tyrannosaurus Rexes, since there were three toy T-rexes, 1 big one, 1 medium one and 1 small one. You can guess what the story was like. They wandered the land looking for herbivorous dinosaurs to rip apart and devour. (Yes 'herbivorous' was also on our vocab list.)

 "The big T-Rex followed the medium T-Rex, and the baby T-Rex followed the big T-Rex..."

 "And then the medium T-rex tore the head off the Triceratops and ate his intestines..."

So lovely.

 Then it was time for the toddlers to be the story-tellers and the school-agers to be the audience.

We really don't know what the story was about, but we do know that it was adorable. And also probably just as violent. Darn Carnivorous dinosaurs.

Another activity that's always a real hit with my kiddos is anything to do with play-dough. I love to have them make their own, as a project in and of itself, with the mandatory 30-min. of post play. 

(Here is the recipe I use that makes the playdough the most like Play-Doh. It also lasts longer and doesn't crumble as long as you keep it air-tight between play-time.)

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon powdered alum
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoons vanilla
food coloring

Mix all dry ingredients. Add oil and water. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until reaching the consistency of mashed potatoes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and food coloring. Divide into balls and work in color by kneading the playdough.

(I don't always use the vanilla, but it makes it smell better.)

We made brown play-dough this time, to represent the dirt, mud and ground in which you would find fossils. Then we took the same Dino toys from before and pressed them into the small ball of dough they each had, to make texture impressions to look like fossils.

Iguanodon fossil.

Tyrranosaurus fossil.

Big T-Rex footprint. (something we learned about)

Another footprint.

Triceratops face-print. (Note the horn-holes)

They also love to color, and I found a dinosaur one in the pile of color-books I have. It was mostly blank. I like some of them.

The kids were asked to write their top 5 favorite vocabulary words on their paper, and the meanings. They were asked to use their best handwriting, and in some cases, that isn't saying much. Needless to say, we're working on that part.

 

 This is the cursive -learning student's practice page.

By the way, this one, by my 1st grader, has "Coprolites" as #2. One of my kids' favorites. It's the scientific word for the fossilized "dino-droppings" scientists use to find out what the dinosaurs ate.

They also like to paint with water-colors a good deal. I used the uncolored pictures from the coloring book to trace pictures onto painting paper, and they chose their favorites to fill in with paint.

 My little almost-three-year-old. He really, really liked to paint. As you can see, I had him do it on a mat so as to save the table.

Here's his Pteranodon.

Tyannonsauraus

Triceratops

Stegasaurus

As you can see, some of my students are realists, while others are more impressionistic artists. At least, I get the impression that they "could paint inside the lines if they wanted to," but its more fun to just throw paint all over...

We did several other activities, but I failed to have my camera there to document them, so these will be all I am putting on the blog. I am currently working on the crazy activities for the next unit.... Stay tuned.