D is for Dinosaur!

Hayden's favorite week yet.  This is actually a 2 week unit on dinosaurs.  The first week went by great!  We started off the week with making a KWL chart on all the things we know and want to know about dinosaurs.  Hayden already thinks he knows everything about dinosaurs.  Some of the things he already "knows" is: 

• plant eaters walk on 4 legs
• meat eaters walk on 2 legs
• some flying dinosaurs lived in caves and mountains
• Jurassic is one time period (this, I was actually surprised he already knew)
• Velociraptors and Oviraptors lived in the desert (?)

He couldn't think of anything he wanted to learn about dinosaurs (like I said, he already thinks he knows everything).  So, I encouraged a list of things that I planned on teaching him such as where certain dinosaurs lived, when dinosaurs first appeared and when they disappeared, the sizes of different dinosaurs, etc.  The only question he came up with on his own was "How long did it take for dinosaur eggs to hatch?"  Now, if anyone can help me with THAT question, that would be great because so far, I haven't found anything on that one!

The things we did this week to learn (more) about dinosaurs was:

• I made a timeline of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, and we hung up 2 dinosaurs each day on the section when they were alive.  We learn where they lived and find it on the globe, what they ate, how big they were, etc.
• We started an experiment with a boiled egg in vinegar.  Each day we feel it to see how it's changed, and after a few weeks, it's supposed to feel all soft and leathery like a real dinosaur egg.
• We made paper machè dinosaur eggs by blowing up balloons with a tiny dinosaur inside it and covering it in newspaper.  I learned a lot about paper machè on this project:  first, it is really messy, and I had to have the boys "assist" me on them.  Second, if you pop the balloon before you paint your project, it will cave in on itself.  One of the boys now has an egg that was "stepped on by another dinosaur".



Painting the dinosaur eggs



• I saved a bunch of chicken bones and cleaned them up really well.  Then, I buried them in their dinosaur sandbox in the backyard.  The boys used hand trowels, magnifying glasses, and big paintbrushes to "clean" and observe the dinosaur bones they found.  Sawyer's attention span didn't last long with this, but Hayden was all over it.  He was determined to find every single bone in that sandbox.  I finally had to help him out or he would've been out there all day!

•  I also found out approximately what the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex footprint was and drew a big footprint on our back patio.  The boys had to estimate how many of their footprints would fit inside the T-Rex footprint.  Then, I traced their feet on construction paper and cut out a whole bunch of them.  They filled up the dinosaur foot print as best as they could (after a while, I got tired of cutting out feet - it took a LOT more than I realized it would).  We figured out it would have taken between 90-100 of their own feet to fill up that dinosaur footprint!

• And last, but not least, of our dinosaur activities for the week was a Dino Drop Activity (another math lesson here).  I got this idea from another blogger, http://www.thepetersonparty.blogspot.com/.  I enjoy reading her posts because she's got lots of great ideas that she does with her two girls who are around my kids' ages.  This particular activity that she did was the Dime Drop Activity - I just substituted miniature dinosaurs instead of dimes to fit our theme.  For this activity, you get a jar and estimate how many of your dimes/dinosaurs you can drop into the jar.  Afterwards, you record your outcome (how many went in and how many didn't).  With the dimes, you can talk about how much a dime is and count by 10s to 100, but with the dinosaurs, that's not really possible.  So, ours was kind of a dumbed down version of the activity.  Regardless, it was fun, and the boys got some math counting skills out of it.