Paleontology
January 9, 2021
Our January theme is Dinoland and the kids are loving it! This first week is all about paleontology. This post may contain affiliate links. Experience Early Learning has put together a super fun unit where they get to investigate dinosaur fossils as if they are actual paleontologist. We have so many hands-on activities so they can understand better what it is like to work with fossils and bones.
A fun Make & Play activity we did this week was arranging “bones” to match the patterns to put the dinos together. They had to turn the pieces the opposite way than the picture but that made it more of a challenge. They had to think about how to switch it to match. They were also able to create their own dinosaurs with the bones.
We LOVE to use colored rice for many hands-on activities. We took cheap rice and colored it with food coloring in a ziplock bag. For this month, we put dinosaurs in the rice and they use plastic tweezers and digging tools to find them. They put them in the muffin tin so they would make sure they found all the ones hidden. They each got a field journal to write in and color the dinosaurs they found.
One of our Dino books was Dinosaur Dig, a Berenstain Bear book. We love all of that series and get excited when they come out with another one. The Invitation to Create activity one day was an excavation dig. They had to cut out the dino bone pics and glue them on the large paper. Then we gave them paint brushes and black sand. We covered the pictures and they very carefully dusted it off the bones. They enjoyed doing it over and over again.
We had fun in math this week using links to help us add. The kindergarten class is doing a great job learning with our math program from the Good and the Beautiful. We also use their Kinder LA and Handwriting programs. We chose to get the PDF files for the different subjects and print them instead of getting the bound workbooks. We have a printer that doesn’t use much ink to print so it made sense to do it that way. We are looking into getting a binder to make our own for next year and to put them in books at the end of this school year for parents to keep as a record of their work.
Each month we have a student journal with all the letters, numbers, color, and shape for the month with our theme. I was so proud of this student for the dinosaur that he drew on his cover. This is a great booklet to practice their handwriting and drawing skills.
We finished up the first week with a really fun Make & Play craft. They took foam “teeth” that were two sizes, a straw and yarn. They cut their straw in many pieces then laced them in patterns or however they wanted to do it. We pretended that they found real dino teeth and that we drilled holes in them so we can string them. We have been using our imagination so much this week. I can’t wait to see how much fun we have the next three weeks on this topic.
I hope you have enjoyed a glimpse into our day at BCAA. We have a great time and learn something new every day. Sometimes it is ME that is learning something new from one of my students. I have a boy in my class that knows EVERYTHING, or so it seems, about dinosaurs and loves helping me learn more every day. I encourage him to tell me what he knows. He can even say the names! I struggle with many of them. Check back next week to see what other fun activities we are doing this month.
Our January theme is Dinoland and the kids are loving it! This first week is all about paleontology. This post may contain affiliate links. Experience Early Learning has put together a super fun unit where they get to investigate dinosaur fossils as if they are actual paleontologist. We have so many hands-on activities so they can understand better what it is like to work with fossils and bones.
A fun Make & Play activity we did this week was arranging “bones” to match the patterns to put the dinos together. They had to turn the pieces the opposite way than the picture but that made it more of a challenge. They had to think about how to switch it to match. They were also able to create their own dinosaurs with the bones.
We LOVE to use colored rice for many hands-on activities. We took cheap rice and colored it with food coloring in a ziplock bag. For this month, we put dinosaurs in the rice and they use plastic tweezers and digging tools to find them. They put them in the muffin tin so they would make sure they found all the ones hidden. They each got a field journal to write in and color the dinosaurs they found.
One of our Dino books was Dinosaur Dig, a Berenstain Bear book. We love all of that series and get excited when they come out with another one. The Invitation to Create activity one day was an excavation dig. They had to cut out the dino bone pics and glue them on the large paper. Then we gave them paint brushes and black sand. We covered the pictures and they very carefully dusted it off the bones. They enjoyed doing it over and over again.
We had fun in math this week using links to help us add. The kindergarten class is doing a great job learning with our math program from the Good and the Beautiful. We also use their Kinder LA and Handwriting programs. We chose to get the PDF files for the different subjects and print them instead of getting the bound workbooks. We have a printer that doesn’t use much ink to print so it made sense to do it that way. We are looking into getting a binder to make our own for next year and to put them in books at the end of this school year for parents to keep as a record of their work.
Each month we have a student journal with all the letters, numbers, color, and shape for the month with our theme. I was so proud of this student for the dinosaur that he drew on his cover. This is a great booklet to practice their handwriting and drawing skills.
We finished up the first week with a really fun Make & Play craft. They took foam “teeth” that were two sizes, a straw and yarn. They cut their straw in many pieces then laced them in patterns or however they wanted to do it. We pretended that they found real dino teeth and that we drilled holes in them so we can string them. We have been using our imagination so much this week. I can’t wait to see how much fun we have the next three weeks on this topic.
I hope you have enjoyed a glimpse into our day at BCAA. We have a great time and learn something new every day. Sometimes it is ME that is learning something new from one of my students. I have a boy in my class that knows EVERYTHING, or so it seems, about dinosaurs and loves helping me learn more every day. I encourage him to tell me what he knows. He can even say the names! I struggle with many of them. Check back next week to see what other fun activities we are doing this month.
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