DINOSAUR WEEK: PK-3

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Ana's Week-

For our first week of school, we focused on dinosaurs in addition to our Calvert curriculum (something that I ended up later dropping, as it wasn’t a great fit for Aria’s style of learning). I’m not as enthused as I wish I was about the curriculum, especially since I spent money on it and was hoping for more, but it did allow me a chance to get my legs under me and figure out exactly how I wanted to handle units with Aria. Over the first few weeks, we discovered that Aria prefers weekly themes and activities that I come up with to a structured plan for the day. We are adapting as we go, and I am sure we will continue to adapt regularly over the years!

For our dinosaur week, I decided I would try and have Aria make snacks for herself, Montessori style. This week my husband, Zach, worked with Aria to make rice Krispy treat dinosaur eggs on Sunday which lasted us all week (snack time and as an after dinner treat). During the week, Aria and I made cheese and fruit dinosaurs for a morning snack or lunch. The cheese and fruit dinosaurs ended up being kind of dangerous when I used toothpicks, but they worked really well when I just had her lay the fruit out and helped us to learn what a stegosaurus is. 

One of the successful activities that we did were a dinosaur matching game, where we matched her toy dinosaurs to their names (Aria loved this far more than I thought she would) and fossils of different kinds. The coffee fossils were a great way to recycle coffee grounds, but they do smell a little bit after a while, so it may not be something you want to hold on to for too long! A dinosaur dig with a kit I bought was fun, but Zach had to help because getting the dinosaur bones out required a lot of time and muscle.

On a side note, I have started Skylar in a weekly My Gym class, one that sister Aria is required to sit on the sidelines for during the 45 minute class. In order to keep Aria happy while I am busy with Skylar, I created a busy bag with fun games like road maps and cars, books, a felt board and felt pieces, a coloring book and markers, and a dinosaur box. I used one of Aria’s lunchboxes and put Playdoh, dinosaurs, sticks and rocks, and some homemade felt trees so that she could create her own little dinosaur world. She loves it and it was a great extension of the unit. 
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I found so many of the items for this week at Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby, but don’t discount what you can find at local museum gift shops. I found some great dinosaur activities at the Coca-Cola Space Science Center here in Columbus, strangely enough, and lucked out that they were playing a dinosaur movie for kids this week. For my dinosaur loving child, this week was a win. Not only did she get to play with lots of dinosaurs, but she loved learning more about something she loves! When learning and passion or fun overlap, it seems to make for a better week all around!

Jessica's Week

Taegan has been really interested in dinosaurs recently so this seemed like a great early theme for preschool lessons. Plus there are a lot of great resources available on Dino’s and I firmly believe girls should be introduced to the same STEM heavy topics that little boys often enjoy. 

My husband and I prepped heavily for this theme. We’ve recently moved into a new home with lots of landscaping and outdoor space so we choose a bed and turned it into a full on dinosaur garden. Think fairy garden but different theme. We chose a bed with lava rock under the shade of a Japanese maple bush. Succulents make excellent prehistoric plants, hubby split open pvc pipe to create a river feature with real water, I added some large stones from the river and logs for the dinos to explore. Taegan painted a few rocks to look like eggs and placed them in nest. She also dug a dirt hole to use as the tar pits. Then we worked as a family to create a paper mache volcano...this obviously won’t live in the garden full time but it sure is a neat addition. For a sturdy volcano we recommend shaping chicken wire around a plastic bottle and mounting to a large plywood board. Then after you paper mache and paint throw a coat of spray poly over the whole thing. We set ours off multiple times this week and were always able to wipe out and dry without damage. Hoping we can get a few years of use out of this if we are careful with it.

In addition to spending lots of time playing in the dinosaur garden we made our own plaster fossils to bury and then dig up just like a real paleontologist. The cookie version of this we attempted for snack didn’t turn out as well as the plaster ones (footprints disappeared when baked) but they were yummy! For some hard core learning I printed Montessori cards for all the dinosaur species we own figurines of, laminated them and matched everything up. I also used them to introduce herbivore vs omnivores etc. I know the pictures made it easier but I was still impressed how well she completed the tasks and how much info she retained about her favorite dinos. Taegan's favorite book this week was “Goodnight, Goodnight Little Dinosaur”. She asked us to read it so many times in fact that I helped her make a dinosaur costume so she could act it out as we read at bedtime. Taegan shows a real passion for the dramatic arts (much like her mama) but right before bed was probably not the best time to get her running around roaring lol!