Learning About Dinosaurs!

We had a popular theme this week and we learned about dinosaurs!  We talked about what we know about dinosaurs and if the children knew any names of dinosaurs.  They said T-Rex, and Stegosaurus  are the two dinosaurs that the children were most familiar with.  We learned about other dinosaurs as well.  We talked about how big the dinosaurs were, how much they weighed, and guessed what colors they were.   We talked about dinosaurs being land, water, or air and if they were meat eaters or plant eaters.  We learned that the dinosaurs with sharp teeth ate meat and the ones with flat teeth were plant eaters.  We watched a very short video on dinosaurs and the children loved it!  We discussed the short video and what would they do if dinosaurs were alive today.  Some of the children said they would find eggs and raise it as pets.  

We made a list of Nn words and practiced writing them.  They matched the uppercase dinosaurs to the eggs that had the lowercase letters.  We read the story, “How Do Dinosaurs Show Good Manners” and then they recalled the details of the story.  They practiced writing names of dinosaurs  We worked on letter sounds and the children had to pick a letter card and verbally say what word starts with the letter they picked.  

The children pretended that our carpet was a dinosaur foot and they measured how big the “foot” was by using legos and then they counted how many legos it was.  They sorted the dinosaurs by its size.  They counted the dots on the dinosaur’s belly and matched it to the number.  They used the flat wooden blocks and made different shapes such as square, rectangle, triangle to name a few.  They used the geoboards to create the shapes they see on the dinosaur’s belly.   We played dinosaur bingo and Dino Count and Clip game.  

We drew a picture of a dinosaur using the dinosaur books as reference.  They used our toy dinosaurs and made tracks by dipping the dinosaur into paint and stamping it on the construction paper.  We made our own paper dinosaurs where the children had to color and cut them out.  

It was cold and snowy this week and we used the Great Room for our Gross Motor since we could go outside some days.  We did have fun doing Dinosaur activities where the children had to do different movements such as jump, run in place, duck, pretend to grab food, etc.  We used the stepping stones as if we were climbing up a hill, and we played musical squares.  It was a fun week and I think the children loved doing the activities.  

Since snow fell, I thought it would be a good reminder for you to bring in snow gear such as snow pants, boots, etc for your children to play in the snow.  This protects their clothes if they should fall in the snow.  You can leave the snow stuff in your child’s cubby but if you take it home, please bring it back because we don’t have many snow pants for all the children.  

You may have heard your children talking about Sparkles who is our classroom Christmas Elf.  He made is appearance and the children look forward to see where he ends up.  They know not to touch the elf if he falls on the ground because he will lose his magic.  If he should fall, they know to get me and I will get my special gloves to put him back where he was.  They know that he will report to Santa Claus on how things went in our classroom.

If you have any questions or concern, please feel free to reach out to me!