Dinos and Fossils

On Thursday we talked about dinosaurs and fossils. As the boys arrived I had playdoh with mini dino figures out to play with. Allen made a volcano with his playdoh, Berkeley buried his dinos in the playdoh, and the other boys had fun making dino tracks in the playdoh.

The boys were very enthusiastic about this topic, so it was easy to get their attention. In fact, during circle time I couldn't get them to stop looking at all the dinosaur books I had. They loved looking at all the different kinds of pictures.

After circle time we read a couple stories and then did some personal "reading" by looking at a book for 2 min. before having to pass it along to the next person. This was an activity that Andrea did before and it worked really well with the boys. Ten minutes had passed before we even knew it!


We talked about how dinos lived a very long time ago and about the different kinds - big, little, sharp teeth, flat teeth, long necks, short legs, walk on all fours, walk on only 2 legs like us, hatch from eggs and so on.

We made fun dino pictures using foamie stickers. The boys worked on these for a long time.

We also watched some short clips from a Prehistoric Planet DVD from the library. It shows realistic dinosaurs and tells all about them. We watched clips about dinos on land, in the water, and in air. They boys were very into this!

They couldn't make up their minds where to sit and they got the blankets out by themselves. It was cute to watch them. =)
While we were watching the video we couldn't believe that dinos invaded the upstairs. We had to go on a dino hunt and the boys found 2 dinos each that were trying to hide.

We talked about the different dinos they found, their names and characteristics. Each boy picked one dino to show us and tell about. Then we pretended to be that dino.

We continued with a story about fossils and where they come from. Then we got to be Paleantologists ourselves and dig some mini dinos out of ice. Our fingers got cold, but eventually we got those dinos out.


We ended with some pages from our workbooks - letters C and D.

It was a fun day and great to see all the boys so enthusiastic about a topic.

Dinos & Fossils

We started off the day with a dinosaur puppet show. I took a bunch of plastic dinosaurs and plants (they have a kit at Walmart for $3) and used green construction paper as my base. We talked about how the dinosaurs lived a long time ago and set up the scene using the plastic dinos and plants. I then used a sheet of brown construction paper that I crumpled into a ball to talk about the theory of a meteorite hitting the earth. I put black construction paper behind all of the plants and dinos and talked about: how the meteorite kicked up a lot of dirt which made it dark, it was so dark that the plants couldn't get enough sunlight (I took all of the plants out of the scene), and then the plant-eating dinosaurs died off (I took all of the plant eaters out), and finally the meat-eating dinosaurs had nothing to eat so they died off as well (I took the rest of the dinos off). It was a great way to introduce the types of dinosaurs as well.

Everyone thought it was great, and then the girls played dinosaur house with all of the pieces. It was really cute to listen to.

We made our own fossils by pressing some of the plastic dinos (seriously, that $3 at Walmart went a long way!) into some slightly wet sand and then poured plaster of Paris over it. I held onto the dinosaurs for our archeological dig on Thursday.

And after reading a few books about dinosaurs, we cut a large dinosaur print out of newspaper and let the kids stand inside it. We then went outside and measured how tall we were compared to a T Rex (75 feet is a long distance down the sidewalk!).

Today, we discussed fossils and all the different types of fossils one can find such as imprints of dinosaur tracks, bones that have changed to rock, insects encased in fossilized tree sap, frozen fossils of whole mammoths, etc.

I let the kids use play dough to make their own imprint fossils. I had originally planned on letting them make handprint impressions to take home, but those quickly were rolled up into "tacos" or cut into shapes of dogs, etc. so I just let them take home the play dough when they were done. Seriously, much more fun! And I forgot how long kids can spend playing with play dough! I finally had to pry them away from the table with the promise of a snack.

We finished the day by heading outside for our own little archeological expedition. In our case, it was a bagful of sand on a tarp with all of their dino fossils from Tuesday hidden inside. I equipped them with toothbrushes (they were amazed to find out that real archaeologists use toothbrushes!) and we headed outdoors.

Everyone had fun excavating their fossils and a couple stayed and played in the sand afterward.

And then of course there was the requisite jumping on the trampoline. It was so nice to have a sunny, warm week!

September 28 - Fossils

The kids had a great time fooling around with fossils today. Thanks to Lara for the real fossils that we put in our counting box. And this was my first time seeing the completed Circle Time board. Fabulous job, Andrea and Becca!

Oh, by the way, I bought a wooden counting box with a chalkboard top. After we counted the fossils, we wrote our number (today it was 9) on the top of the box. I hadn't planned on it, but the kids all ended up taking turns writing their own little 9's on the chalkboard as well. Very cute.

Our letter of the day once again was F (repetition is good, right?) so we started off fingerprinting some large cutouts of the letter F.

We then started to make hand imprints, but I quickly realized that the air-dry clay I was using was way too stiff for their little hands to even make a small dent in it, so I broke out the pack of dinosaurs I'd been saving for Thursday and we made dinosaur tracks through the clay. Some of the kids really got into it and started mashing in dino heads and bodies (their own little La Brea tar pits!). The clay "tar pits" are drying right now, but they'll get them on Thursday.

The finished product!

Since the hand imprints hadn't quite worked out as planned, we used playdoh to make imprints in (much more squishy!) and then poured Plaster of Paris in them to make little hand-shaped fossils. Those should also be dry in time to be taken home on Thursday.

And finally, the kids got to be archaeologists and do their own "fossil dig" using grapefruit spoons to chisel small plastic animals encased in "stone" (i.e. ice). Notice the mitten "work gloves."

Eve was really getting into it . . .

. . . while Maylie took a more novel approach . . .

All in all, lots of fun was had by everyone. However, I think the thing the kids enjoyed most was watching the Vienna Public Works crew stop by to do a special trash pick-up!