Dinosaurs!

We just started (a few weeks ago) a unit on dinosaurs. It is a hard one because he already knows so much that it is really hard to know what to do. We started with dinosaurs at preschool co-op. We did some fun stuff, but I, of course, did not take pictures. For one of the activities, I used tape to create a dinosaur sized foot print on the floor. When ollie got up, he thought that was really neat. We measured how many of our feet fit in one and even how many kids!

We followed up the dino print activity by doing another with dinosaur feet. I made 10 dinosaur feet (smaller ones) and set them on the floor. At first, ollie had fun jumping, skipping and running to each. Then, we played a little game. I used the footprints to lead to a dinosaur I had hidden. Ollie loved following them and really enjoyed this game. He even hid it for me a couple times.

We are still working on our fine motor skills. One activity that never gets old is drawing in flour. I filled a cookie sheet with flour. I had ollie practice writing Ds with his finger. I then gave him his dinosaurs to play with in the flour. He had so much fun. He made prints and buried them. We soon adding other spices and he made trees and scenes.

For another activity, I wrote dinosaur on a strip of construction paper. I was surprised that when I showed it to Ollie he knew what it said. He has told pointed to books and said that before but there was always pictures to give a hint. He just knows the word! I handed him the letters to the same word and had him place them over the letters. I did this first with capital letters and then with lowercase. He did a great job.

Ollie's favorite activity was making his own dinosaur egg.I blew up a balloon and we put a baby Brachiosaurus inside. He then did his own paper mache and covered it. When it dried, he got out his hammer and chisel from his dinosaur exhibition game and cracked it open to find the baby. So exciting for a little dino lover!

 Finally, we learned about measurement. I gave ollie a ruler and had him pick 4 dinosaurs to measure. We measured their height and length and wrote them down.