ROAR! Dinosaur!

Yes, I have two very happy little boys tonight.  It is finally dinosaur week in our house.  The reason why I say finally, is because they have asked since before school officially started to study dinosaurs.  My logic for not starting them right away?  I did not want school to be a flop and ruin their love for dinosaurs.  So, 3 weeks into our school calendar, they are roaring throughout the house happy as, well, maybe a brontosaurus?

To start off the week, I made them an inside sensory bin.  Luckily I have a table that is split in 2, so they each have their own side to manipulate and destroy.  The base of the table this week was sand - I had 80 pounds of it in our outside sandbox, so I borrowed about 2 cups from their.  In addition to the sand they had one plastic tree each, smooth glass beads for water, rocks, floral moss, kidney beans, and Toob Dinosaurs.  I think I have officially fallen in love with the Toob figures; they are the perfect size for play worlds, are so real to life, and are just awesome.  I found mine in Michaels, and then I have just grown our collection from Amazon (yes, they have revolutionary war figures.  Yippee!).

Anyhow, Pierce woke up this morning and was ready for school at 5:15 am.  To preoccupy him and to keep him out of his sensory table (it was a complete surprise to them), we played connect the dots on the white board.  Even Daddy joined in before work and was all sorts of complicated with his connect the dots.  I was just focusing on shapes.  :)

After our usual morning ritual of a song and doing some finger plays, we read Dinosaur Dinosaur by Kevin Lewis.  It was the perfect length book, and I have to admit it was very cute.  From there I pulled out the dinosaur fossils that I had purchased from Amazon.  (I think I am a bit addicted to Amazon).  Pierce has been in love with this one game from www.sesamestreet.org that has Grover being a paleontologist.  This has spurred a massive curiosity about paleontology, so I figured making fossil imprints would be the perfect way to tie that together.  And it was a home run.  Not only did both boys love making the imprints in the clay, Pierce turned it into a game of what letter the dinosaurs were eating.  They concentrated really hard on it, and I am hoping their imprints dry out by Friday so I can bury them in the sand.  If not, the fossils will work just fine.  :)   In any case, I was so very happy to witness Pierce showing Carter the different letters of the alphabet, and helping him find the ones I was asking him to find.  The teamwork component of what I am trying to teach them is really coming together.  Pierce also decided to try to match up the fossils to our Montessori dinosaur cards and figure out whose bones he had in his hand.  He really took what I planned to be a simple activity and made it grow.  *proud mommy moment*

Our imprints that we made.  :)

Helping Carter figure out his letters.

From our expanded fossil project, we moved on to making the other craft I had planned for today; ripping up tissue paper and gluing it on to a dinosaur cut out.  Never in a million years, did I expect my children to enjoy ripping up tissue paper circles as much as they did.  They have always shied away from tissue paper in the past, but I am thinking since it had to do with dinosaurs that is why there was a difference in their tune. They not only ferociously ripped up the tissue paper, they had fun making it "rain" and trying to catch certain colors of tissue paper.  To make the dinosaurs, I watered down some simple white glue so that they could paint the dinosaur with glue and then stick the little pieces on (yay for fine motor skills).  Pierce realized that if you glue over the pieces you stuck down, you could layer more colors of paper, and it looked really cool.  Carter lost interest in the gluing part rather quickly, so he went back to throwing the tissue paper in the air.

Ripping up tissue paper.

Making our dinosaurs

Layering his tissue paper.  :)

The final planned lesson of today was open play with the sensory table.  I took one last picture of it, since I knew it would never look the same again.  :)  I gave each boys a set of tweezers, a scoop, and complete free reign to create and play however they wanted.  Pierce brought out the sheets to match up his Toob dinosaurs to our sheets, and did that for a little bit.  When Carter realized that he could make the beans "pop high in air," both boys fell in love with the tweezers and made beans pop everywhere.  It was hilarious!  And I know they were learning, and eventually they went back to the dinosaurs.  They absolutely loved the table, and have already asked if they could play with it again in the morning.  Am I surprised by this?  No.  They love their sensory stuff.  There is no denying that.

Today was such an awesome learning day with the boys.  In all, we ended up having school for 3 hours.  I love it!  They were actually upset with me for having them stop to eat lunch.  And of course, after lunch came nap, and neither was a fan of that.  However, I am not a fan of my children without naps.  ;)  Hope everyone has a great rest of their week, and coming up on tap for us on Wednesday is making treasure rocks.  Yay!