This week, we were working on “Dd”. We focused mainly on dinosaurs. Here was this week’s dinosaur themed muffin tin lunch:
-fries
-dino shaped chicken nuggets
-yogourt with dinosaur sprinkles
-dinosaur fruit snacks
-pepperoni sticks (logs)
-broccoli (trees)
-plastic dinosaurs as “garnish”
Excavating dinosaurs from ice. I got this great idea from I Can Teach My Child. To make these, I put a bit of water in disposable cups and froze them, then added a plastic dinosaur to each one and covered with water and continued freezing. I then took them out of the cups and kept them in a bag in the freezer until we were ready to use them. The kids used water in dinosaur shaped water guns and eye droppers and plastic knives to dig out the dinosaurs. They loved this activity!
Dino Dig – I gave the kids a kit where they dug out a glow in the dark dinosaur out of a dinosaur “egg”. This activity didn’t go as well because the kids didn’t like taking turns and because it created quite a bit of a fine dust which bothered Miss Optimism’s lungs. I wouldn’t recommend this activity as the ice one made less mess, was less expensive to make, and the kids enjoyed it more.
You can check out our dinosaur sensory bin here.
Here are some of the activities that I put in the kids’ workboxes this week:
-dinosaur measuring activity (idea from Counting Coconuts)
-dinosaur matching activity…I printed off cards on various sites for the kids to match up with the dinos in the bowl
-dinosaur graphing (from Confessions of a Homeschooler)
-I set up a pile of books about dinosaurs next to the reading corner so that the person who got this card in their bin could sit and read the ones that interested them
-Dinosaur Card Game
One of my favourite moments this week was when we decided to do our schoolwork in the kitchen so that I could get some pumpkin cookies made. The mood was light, the kids were helping with the cookies periodically, and after I had read from the Science textbook and Story of the World, we turned some music on and danced around before they started working on some of their worksheets!
Every day, we focused on a different dinosaur with activity sheets, colouring sheets, dot-to-dots, and information sheets. I got most of these from All Kids Network and Kidsparkz.
I used a few different tools to help the kids remember which direction the “d” and “b” face, including this cute “dog” and “bee” printable from Five Js.
In our Apologia Science, we started learning about the skeletal system and the kids are picking it up really well. Math U See continues to be going well. In Story of the World, we finished learning about Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar. The kids are still loving their gymnastics classes.