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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Birds!

Honey Pot is 3 years old

Little M&M is 13 months old

Books

We went to another one of our new libraries, and we were BLOWN AWAY by it. They had a huge selection of books, little games on each end-cap for the wee ones, puppets, a live turtle and bunny. I could go on. So this is what it's like moving from the small country to the big city, huh? We will be going back to this library every week, that's for sure! Here are the bird books we got this week:

Honey Pot's favorites were Grumpy Bird, Penguin and The Baby BeeBee Bird. She requested these often throughout the week.

Puppet Play

Honey Pot has a couple of bird puppets, so we pulled them out and did a little bit of puppet play this week. We worked some facts into our play as we talked about how they fly, what they eat, etc. She just loves pretend play!

Birdseeds - Sensory and Bird Feeder Craft

We had some birdseed leftover from Honey Pot's sensory bin during our There's a Bird on your Head theme last summer. That was perhaps one of her favorite sensory materials! Take a peek! So I pulled out the bag of leftover seeds and let Little M&M play with it for a minute before we began our craft.

This was all his idea...

There's something about the need to put your feet in a sensory material! They both always do it!

When he lost interest, I poured the birdseed out for Honey Pot's craft. First she spread some natural peanut butter onto an empty toilet paper tube.

Then she rolled it into the birdseed.

When it was completely covered, she took it upon herself to play with the remaining seeds. I let her have at it for a bit while we waited for Little M&M to wake up from his nap.

 

Then we went outside to the yard to find a nice branch to slip it on.

 We went outside often during the week to check on it to see if the birds had enjoyed their food yet.

Bird Feather Craft

I found this fun idea from Pinterest, originating from a website called Crafts for Kids. I unfortunately lost the pictures of this craft in progress, as my computer crashed YET AGAIN after I had uploaded them. But Honey Pot did all the gluing herself, and loved blowing the feathers around!

Do-A-Dot Bird Worksheet

In addition to the above process pictures, I lost the entirety of this activity. But I thought I would mention what we did. I created a worksheet in Photoshop Elements of various birds (including some tricky ones like a penguin, ostrich, etc.) as well as a few animals that are not birds. Then I asked Honey Pot to use her dot marker to put a dot on all of the birds. She really liked this activity, and found all of the birds without a problem. So disappointed to have lost these pictures and others...but I just bought a new computer so I won't be losing anymore Tot School pictures! Phew!

Mama Bird Catches The Worm

I found the inspiration for this game from PreKinders. Loved the concept of it. I also made it more fun for Honey Pot by creating a nest of baby birds for her to bring the worms back to. First I cut up some chenille stem "worms" in colors matching the birds, and provided Honey Pot with a clothespin. I called her Mama Bird and asked her to catch some worms for her babies. She loved this game!

She had difficulty with the clothespin though, so I brought out her plastic pair of tongs (set of three for $1 at the Dollar Tree) and let her continue that way. She flew through this game after that!

Happy baby birds with their matching worms!

Feeding the Ducks

We also took a trip to our local duck pond to feed the ducks. I recently read that bread is one of the worst things you could give them, as it actually harms their growth and pollutes the water. We  brought them oats and grapes (cut in half). Other healthy options are birdseed, frozen peas or corn (defrosted), earthworms or lettuce. The kids had a lot of fun, and it's so close to home that we'll return here often!

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