X Is For Extinct and Excavation

Today we talked about the letter X and dinosaurs.  Our nursery rhyme was A Hunting We Will Go.  We started with our calendar and sang the days of the week and months of the year and read several dinosaur books.  We read out of the USbourne children's encyclopedia, read a few online books from Two Fish's tablet, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas. We looked at a lot of dinosaur pictures and tried identifying their main features.

For music time we are going to start using the children's song dice I made a couple years ago one at a time.  The songs we started with are Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Ring Around The Rosie, The Bear Went Over The Mountain, London Bridge, I've Been Working On The Railroad, and Bingo.   We use instruments, the parachute and rainbow streamers and have a lot of fun.

 We played a game of memory with dinosaur cards.

 We did a bunch of prewriting worksheets.  The kids love drawing with the markers.  We also talked about the same vs. different and the kids did some little exercises.  We practiced patterning and sequencing with some cute laminated printables from here.  We practiced counting to 12 and recognizing the numbers 1-12 by counting dinosaurs.

 Next we talked about paleontologist and practiced opening a "fossil" made out of salt dough with a plastic dinosaur inside.  They loved this.

Then we did a dinosaur dig in a bin full of wheat.  They were digging for paper dinosaur bones, plastic dinosaurs and the letter x (for extinct and excavation) that were made out of pipe cleaners.  They loved this project.  They would scream every time they found something and they were very meticulous with their little paint brushes and shovels. 

 When they had found all of the bones and letter X they attempted to reassemble the bones into a dinosaur on a piece of paper.  Their dinosaurs were pretty creative.  We finished up by letting the kids play with all of our dinosaur toys and doing a dinosaur puzzle.

 It was a good dinosaur day.  I'm sure we will make it to the dinosaur museum this week.

 We had to repeat most of the books and activities when Red Fish came home.  She also loved opening her fossil and doing a dinosaur dig.  We also spent some time singing and playing with the parachute.  The kids love that parachute.