Well, now that the spring fever madness
is over, I can relax a bit and try to spend some time sprucing up this blog…
Yay for Spring Break!
Spring fever was at an all-time high
this week! The munchkins were super talkative and just weren’t into really
listening very well this past week. I tried my best not to mention spring break
too much around them but I think they sensed both the exhaustion and excitement
about spring break from me and my aides.
I had my Dinosaur week all planned out
but I left room for flexibility because the week before spring break is never
easy! Since it was a short week I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do all the
dinosaur activities that I had in mind and I admit, I was a bit bummed out
about that, but I knew a Dinosaur theme unit would hold their attention long
enough to get through the 4 day week!
On Monday we began the week by talking
about the letter of the week. We discussed things that begin with the letter
Dd, which then led into Dinosaurs and they managed to have a very extensive discussion
about dinosaurs and I could see their excitement and I knew they were hooked.
So, I took their enthusiasm and ran
with it.
In this post, I will highlight just a
few of my dinosaur activities that were a huge hit with my munchkins!
Dinosaur Egg Surprises
I started the unit by making homemade
dinosaur eggs. I had done this once before but I only made five the last time… My
son and I made 20 little dinosaur eggs and placed tiny dinosaurs toys that I
had bought at the Dollar Tree. The recipe is as follows: (I had to double it to
make 20 little eggs)
- 1 cup of flour
- ½ cup of salt
- ¼ cup of sand (I
used craft sand purchased from Michaels)
- 1 cup of coffee
grinds (or dirt)
- ¾ cup of water
Mix the dry
ingredients together in a large bowl. Slowly add water and knead with your
hands until it has dough like consistency. Take toy (or other item that you
wish to put inside the egg) and mold the mixture around it to form an egg
shape.
These can be
air dried for a day or two OR you can place them in the oven, (which I did b/c
of time constraints). Bake at 150 for about 20 minutes.
When I brought them in the next
morning, the munchkins were very curious about what they were! Some of the
guesses I received were that it was a big cookie, a rock, and an egg made from
dirt.
The excitement of exploring the egg (touching and some even smelled it!)
and using tools to open it up was amazing and I was thrilled that I was able to
get some of their facial expressions as they were” in the moment” and as they were investigating their egg.
The looks on their little faces as they "discovered" what was inside:
ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS!
(*I try my best to not photograph the
munchkins directly, but for this one time, I had to do so, in order to capture
the true excitement in their faces!)
Paleontologist Play
In our sand table, they had a blast
pretending to be paleontologists and used brushes and sand sifters to discover
and find the toy dinosaur skeletons that were buried beneath the sand.
Dino Nest
I turned our water table into a Dino Nest
by using paper like hay (I am not sure what it really was, I just found it in the art closet and used it!) and I placed
eggs, filled with dinosaur counters, inside the nest.
Math: Spin & Graph Dinosaurs
We worked on our counting and graphing skills
by playing a Dinosaur Spin & Graph game, compliments of
2teachingmommies.com
Many of them really enjoyed this and
were excited to try to be the first one to reach the number 10. They even asked
to play it again the next day, so I am sure I will be making other Spin &
Graph types of games for future math units!
Math:
Dinosaur Patterns
We also did a patterning activity with
dinosaur cutouts that I was very excited to make with my new teacher toy –
Cricut Expression 2.
As many of them can continue a
simple AB pattern, I decided to challenge them a little. Our focus for the
patterns was on the shape of the dinosaur cutout (Spikes vs. No Spikes) rather than
the just the color and type of dinosaur cutout.
Egg Relay Races
And to help alleviate the madness
caused by Spring Fever, I decided to get the munchkins outside for some fresh
air and we had an Egg Relay Race.
It was an awesome way to promote teamwork and
to get outside to release that energy!
They LOVED it!
Dinosaur
Books
I have a very extensive library of
Dinosaur books. (These are all available on Amazon.) Some of this week’s favorite books were:
One more thing:
When I asked the munchkins “What do you think happened
to the dinosaurs?”, one girl answered: “Maybe an asteroid came and only hit one
part of the Earth and the dinosaurs who lived there died but the other ones who
live far away did not die and they are still alive somewhere!”
How do you like THAT theory??!!
