Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Dinosaur delights

Dinosaurs about to meet an erupting volcano.  senk 2013
My boys love dinosaurs. They have little dinosaur figurines, which they commandeered from my college dorm-room-door birthday decorating days. They have larger dinosaurs, which they used during our volcano eruptions earlier in the school year. They have dinosaur pillowcases (courtesy of a Grandma who loves to sew). So, it only makes sense that one of Joey's Exploration units would be on Dinosaurs.

Designed as a thematic unit, the Dinosaur exploration allows Joey to learn about something he likes, while also practicing life skills he needs. Reading and math are at the top of our list when it comes to learning. So, all of our lessons center around these main concepts. But, when looking at thematic lessons, it can be difficult to know what resources are particularly good for a specific topic. Of course, Google and Pinterest can proffer ideas - but then, you have to sift through the overload of information. Here is a look at what resources and activities worked well for my Kindergartener and Preschooler.

The core of the lesson centers around a fun activity book entitled, "I love dinosaurs Giant Activity Book" by Let's Go Green. It's particularly good for my preschooler, but Joey loves it too. It is not overly challenging, but provides great connection points to talk about more complex concepts: like carnivores vs. herbivores vs. omnivores. Joey had fun applying what he learned to identify the different dinosaurs via one of those describing words, based on what they ate. We took reading exercises from "National Geographic Kids Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference Ever" by Don Lessem and "National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs." We had acquired the latter at The Green Valley Bookfair for a fabulous price and it was particularly useful for Joey to practice reading. The former has a great introduction on habitats, fossil formation, and other basic dinosaur information. Then, there is a puzzler deck from The World Almanac for Kids on Dinosaur Science! which captured Joey's attention with mind-bending questions, kind of like Brain Quest in format.

Joey and Ezra had fun hands-on activities, too. Using handmade play dough, they pressed their toy dinosaurs' feet in it to springboard a discussion on trace fossils. Russell made soft pretzel dough and helped the boys fashion coils into dinosaur footprints. (They were delicious - especially sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar!) We had storytime with Jane Yolen and Mark Teague's creations, such as "How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?" and "How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends?" The boys even got to try to make up their on How Do Dinosaurs... book ideas! Story time always leads into great discussions about authors and illustrators (who they are and what they do), which are key concepts in Kindergarten standards. And we are already anticipating field trips in the coming months to some museums with dinosaur-related fossils and displays. For those of us that live on the East Coast, "Dinosaurs of the East Coast" by David B Weishampel and Luther Young has been invaluable in tracking information on seeing sites firsthand. And, we've carefully selected videos that can give a look at dinosaur life - all thanks to Shenandoah County Public Library and Netflix. Do be careful what you choose, though, for those little guys or gals - we, of course, perused most of the episodes of Dinosaur Train and came across dinosaur videos through the Discovery Channel, too. We even bought a dinosaur tree to plant - at least that's how it was advertised : )

So, let curiosity and imagination flow; explore dinosaurs like a 4-or-6-year-old aspiring paleontologist; and then post some fun dinosaur activities that you do, too.