Dino Week, Part I

When we went to the Field Museum in Chicago over Thanksgiving, it really got the boys excited about dinosaurs.  So when I started Christmas shopping for the boys on Amazon, I looked for fun dinosaur toys and activity kits for them to do.  I shared the ideas with Auntie Rachel and Uncle Brad, and they hooked Ben and Joey up with some fun dino activities.  I thought we'd put these new goodies (dinosaur shrinky dinks and a T-Rex excavation kit) to use by doing a dinosaur unit study during school time. 

You would think that as someone with a teaching background, I would love to develop my own unit and lesson plans.  FALSE.  I prefer to let someone else invent the wheel, and then I tweak it to fit the needs of my student(s).  Because we didn't need to purchase a full science curriculum for kindergarten, we haven't done a whole lot of "structured" science (although there have been plenty of science-y learning opportunities as we have gone along).  I sure wasn't going to be inventing dinosaur plans, so I hit the internet to find something to help me out. 

I came across this dinosaur unit on the Homeschool Share website, and it is golden (especially since it's of a Biblical worldview).  Not only is it a minimum of 8 days of lessons/activities, but the author of the unit included books to get at the library and links to printables.  At 5 1/2, Ben's attention span is not very long, so I am picking and choosing the activities that will suit him best.   Here's what we have done so far.

First, we talked about creation, that dinos were land animals, which means God created them on the 6th day.  Then we talked about how dinosaurs were reptiles, and the characteristics that make reptiles, reptiles!  We used the Homeschool Share unit's link to make this printable T-book.

Also based on an idea from the Homeschool Share's unit, we put together our big world map puzzle (by Melissa and Doug), checked the bellies of all our plastic dinos to see what was what, and then put them on the appropriate continent from which they came.  They really had fun with this one!

Then we read the book Bones, Bones, Dinsaur Bones and talked about what a paleontologist does.  Then we busted into the t-rex excavation kit Ben got for Christmas and started digging out our very own dino!  It does make a bit of a mess, but the high sides of the bowl help along with wetting the plaster.  We quickly found our first bone, although the process is a bit longer than this 5 year old would have liked!  When we're done, we'll have all the bones to a complete t-rex skeleton and can assemble it.  Look for more pictures soon!

 

The first find!  At first we thought it was teeth until we got ALL of it uncovered...

Ribs anyone?!

Then Ben invited some guests to help him.  Professor Daddy is in shock and awe!

It was really cute to hear Ben explain how to do this to Joey.  They actually work together quite nicely.

Professor Mommy has to do most of the work to uncover a bone piece, and then Ben comes along and finishes.