D is for Dinosaur

When learning about the letter D, what could be more fun than turning it into a dinosaur theme?  I can’t think of anything better for a 4 year old boy.  Hunter loved learning the letter D and all about dinosaurs.  This was definitely his favorite unit all year.

 Hunter’s letter D bin was full of fun things for the week.  Harper kept taking her diaper out and putting it away haha, she didn’t understand why it was in the bin.

 I printed out this letter D page from these preschool printables and then Hunter had to make the D using pattern blocks.

He spent lots of time playing with the little dinosaurs.  We used them for some math games too, like sorting, patterns, counting, etc.

Hunter and Harper enjoyed using the dinosaur stamps.

Hunter loved this dinosaur mat!  He has spent hours playing with this.

Hunter working on some dinosaur puzzles.

Finding and coloring the letter D.

We used painters tape to show how long some of the dinosaurs were.  Hunter was pretty impressed with how big they were.  We weren’t able to do the really big dinosaurs because they were bigger than our house!

At the end of the tape I put a little fact card about the dinosaur the tape was representing.

We made dinosaur fossils by pressing little dinosaurs into modeling clay.

What would a dinosaur unit be without making a volcano?  Hunter liked doing the volcano but when the “lava” came out of the mountain and touched his dinosaurs he was not happy.  So, the rest of our volcano fun had to be done without the dinosaurs nearby.

A representation of big a t-rex footprint was.

We had a little fossil dig to look for dinosaur bones.

Hunter working on finding some bones

Hailey helped too, it was actually really hard to get the bones out.

Then Hailey and Hunter took turns hiding some dinosaur bones in the sandbox and then searching for them.

Learning about dinosaurs was our favorite unit this year!

Tot School

Hunter is 17.5 months old.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I have really been slacking on my blogging.  These next few weeks are going to be super busy too!  This time of year always seems like there is just so much going on.

Our theme for Tot School was dinosaurs and the color orange.

We made an orange discovery bottle.  It’s filled with lots of fun stuff, and as long as I make sure to include some beads so that it makes noise when he shakes it, Hunter is happy.

Hunter used his dinosaurs to make some orange foot prints.

Hunter loved using the dinosaur stamps.

He made an erupting volcano (original post here.)

He enjoyed making dinosaur footprints in some model magic (original post here).  This kept his attention for a very long time!

We played a game with some vocabulary words for Hailey.  Hunter loved jumping from one dinosaur footprint to another.

Hailey read Hunter some dinosaur books.

One evening while my parents were babysitting they made a ramp out of a pizza box.  Hunter thought it was great to drive his cars down the ramp.

One of the reasons I was busy- we went to the ocean… so here is some “real life” tot school:

Hunter experiencing the ocean for the first time.

He loved playing with the sand.

He thought the waves were fun too, as long as they didn’t splash him too much.  He called the ocean “bubbles.”

We had a great time and made lots of wonderful memories!!

Stop by 1+1+1=1 to see what the other tots were up to this week.

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Model Magic Dinosaur Fossils

Last week we made dinosaur fossils, and while they turned out like I expected, Hailey was disappointed that she could not play with her fossil since it was breakable.  So, my solution was to make another dinosaur fossil, this time using Model Magic instead of Plaster of Paris.

First up, press a dinosaur into some Model Magic

Hunter loved this!!  He spent a very long time making footprints in his piece.

Once you are happy with how it looks, just leave it out to dry.  If you just let it air dry it will take several days.

Hailey’s completed t-rex fossil.

Super simple, and they can be played with.

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Poppins Book Nook- Dinosaur Fun!

I am so excited to be a part of the Poppins Book Nook!  This is our first month joining in the fun.  Each month a different theme is picked and then everyone picks a book that relates to the theme and then creates some activities to go along with the book.

We picked “Dinosaurs Before Dark” by Mary Pope Osborne for our book.  Hailey has just recently started reading chapter books, so she has been really excited that she can read these books on her own.  If you haven’t read this book before- it’s a series about a brother and sister, Jack and Annie.  This is the first book in the series where Jack and Annie discover a tree house.  There are lots of books in the tree house and when Jack is looking at one about dinosaurs he wishes that he could see a real pteranodon.  Suddenly Jack and Annie end up in the days of dinosaurs and of course, an adventure begins.  I love the Magic Tree House series- they are fun, fictional stories but with lots of opportunities for learning about history added in.

We decided to make a dinosaur diorama for our project:

A shoebox just wasn’t going to cut it for our plans 🙂 so we used a regular box instead.  Hailey got to work painting her box.

She added lots of different props.

Some dinosaur eggs

A volcano

She put a stream and a little pond in, painted some grass on, added some cotton clouds, put some sand and trees in.  And of course, the dinosaurs.

Hailey’s completed diorama- she did a great job!

We also made a paper mache dinosaur:

First the dinosaur was formed using aluminum foil.  There is newspaper stuffed inside his head and body to help keep its shape.

The dinosaur all covered in paper mache.
For paper mache, we use a 2:1 ratio of water to flour, and I added a little white glue to the mixture too.  It takes a couple of days to be completely dry.

Once the dinosaur was dry it was time to paint him.  We did a little research about the color of dinosaurs- some scientists believe that dinosaurs were gray, dark green, brown, etc. so that they could blend in with their surroundings.  Other scientists believe that dinosaurs were colorful and even had pretty, bright spots in order to attract a mate.  Hailey decided she agrees with the scientists who think the dinosaurs were colorful, so she painted him purple.

She added some pink and blue spots.

The completed paper mache dinosaur.

We learned a lot about volcanos too.  I cut out some dinosaur footprints and wrote some volcano related vocabulary words on them (lava, eruption, magma, crust, mantle, outer core, inner core, pumice, tuff, and pahoehoe).  Hailey wrote the definitions on the backs of the footprints.

Then she spread them around the living room.  I made some noises and Hailey and Hunter danced around on the footprints.

When I stopped making the noise, Hailey read the definition of the word.  The goal, of course, being that once we play it enough she will remember the definitions.

We did a bunch of fun activities all about dinosaurs so it was really hard to pick what to share!  So, here are some of the other activities we did last week too:

  Hailey made some dinosaur bones.

She created a dinosaur fossil.

One of her favorite activities was setting off a volcano she made.

She made this pretty dinosaur oil pastel painting.

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Check out some (or all!) of the other bloggers participating in Poppins Book Nook:

If you have your own fun activity to link up, you can that here: