Dinosaurs

Honey Pot is 3 years old

Little M&M is 14 months old

Books

We borrowed a lot of books from the library this week about dinosaurs. Honey Pot's favorites were Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She was Extinct and Curious George's Dinosaur Discovery. I really loved Dinosaurumpus too! What fun books!

Footprints in Playdoh

Honey Pot recently squished together two different colors of playdoh. I saw it sitting aside on the counter ready to be discarded and decided to use it for a quick game. I asked Honey Pot to close her eyes while I walked a dinosaur across the playdoh. Then I asked her to guess which dinosaur it was.

She loved this game, and even helped me roll out the playdoh in between rounds.

She matched each of the dinosaurs to their footprints.

And then she wanted to make her own footprint!

Do-A-Dot Dinosaur - Alphabet Recognition

I found this printable from Making Learning Fun. I asked Honey Pot to find all of the letters she knows, and call them out as she put a dot on them.

It helped to keep her interest by asking if she wanted to try a new color after every few letters!

She did pretty well! I still helped her identify a few though.

Ice Excavation

I found this idea from Pinterest, originally from Naughty Secretary Club. We had a nice hot day during our dinosaur week, and I thought Honey Pot might enjoy excavating some dinosaurs from ice. She did! I supplied her with a few of her pretend tools as well as a squirt bottle of water. Then she and Little M&M got to work.

I froze the dinosaurs in layers, since they sank to the bottom. The final layer wasn't entirely frozen through by the time we began this activity. So once the kids got through the top layer, there was some water to navigate through!

Little M&M loved hammering!

Soon the ice was able to pop out of its container.

Once Daddy came home from work, he was able to bring out his real tools and help to finish it up!

This was also a nice sensory activity! Brr!

They both had tons of fun. And in the end, they had 10 new little dinosaur toys to play with!

Dinosaur Bone Craft

I loved this idea from Busy Bee Crafts! I printed out their free template then provided Honey Pot with some dry noodles to glue onto it. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is her favorite dinosaur, so I just had to include this in our activities this week!

And look! More sensory fun!

The final product. How cool!

Shadow Matching

I found this printable from 2 Teaching Mommies. Honey Pot loved this game. She did it flawlessly, and I think it was a real confidence booster. She even asked to do it a second time!

Cutting Practice

The cutting practice printables came from 3 Dinosaurs! I was impressed with how well Honey Pot remembered how to hold her scissors! She's made great progress.

Which is Largest/Smallest?

I also grabbed a worksheet from PreK-8. First I had her identify and circle the biggest dinosaur in each group.

Then I asked her to circle the smallest in each group.

She did well with this activity! It's just hard to see since she chose a yellow crayon and a pencil!

Writing Practice

Another worksheet I chose for Honey Pot comes from Over The Big Moon. I wish I had printed more of these, because she loved this! She did this one twice too.

Which Is Different?

This worksheet also comes from 2 Teaching Mommies. Honey Pot needed a bit of help with this one!

Sensory Play

We have been playing with sand a lot recently. I just brought her dinosaurs out onto the deck for a dinosaur small world. She had fun playing!

Dinosaur Button Art

This is a fun game we play once in awhile from Alex. We pulled out the dinosaur page and Honey Pot enjoyed popping the buttons into place.

Perhaps the most fun is pushing the buttons back out!

Then she made up her own game.

"It's me! No, it's a monster!"

Measuring Dinosaur Feet

I Can Teach My Child had a fun post about measuring dinosaur feet. We first cut out a dinosaur foot from brown craft paper. Dinosaur feet come in all shapes and sizes, but we found one in our research to be 48"x24". We chose that one and shaped it like a T-Rex foot. Then we also cut out a tracing of one of Honey Pot's feet.

We made a hypothesis as to how many of her feet would equal the length of a dinosaur's foot. This is a fairly new concept for her, so I had to rephrase my question a couple of times and explain it. 

She made a guess for her feet, my feet and her Daddy's feet, and we took measurements for all of them!

Dinosaur Exhibit

We don't live near the Museum of Natural History to see the real dinosaur bones, but we do have something nearby that was really fun! True to size dinosaurs that moved and roared! Honey Pot and Little M&M had a blast on this little field trip. And honestly, their Daddy and I did too!

Family Movie Night

To conclude our amazing dinosaur week, we watched an old favorite of ours, "The Land Before Time." Honey Pot enjoyed it too!

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