Thursday, September 29, 2011

Pterodactyls in the classroom

Today I showed the children a picture of a pterodactyl and pointed out that it had wings and could fly like a bird. We looked through our dinosaur books and found more pictures of pterodactyls. I also told the children that pterodactyls lived in nests. This inspired us to make a big nest out of pillows and blankets for the children to play in. Then we set to work making our own pterodactyl wings!

Before we started, I cut out two wings for each child. I made them about as long as a two year old's arm. I gave each child two wings, a squeeze bottle of glue, and some scraps of tissue paper.


When the wings were decorated, I covered them with contact paper. This took a bit of time because I had so many wings to cover, but it was well worth the effort. Once this was done, I stapled each pair of wings together. I punched holes near the middle and inserted pipe cleaners to hold the wings on the children.
The children loved them! Most of them wore their wings for the rest of day and proudly took them home to show their families.
I also made pterodactyl airplanes. I drew the pterodactyls on the airplanes and the children colored them. They had lots of fun flying them around the room. 


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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Crazy for Dinosaurs!

Recently the children have been very interested in dinosaurs. We've incorporated them into many different areas of our classroom and the children just can't get enough of them.

Dinosaurs in the sensory table.
Dinosaurs in the block area.
Dinosaur cards (from Target's dollar section) for reading and looking at.
 We took the dinosaurs outside and when we brought them in, we gave them a bath.
 I put out dinosaurs with the play dough this morning and the children made dinosaur footprints. They also wrapped the dinosaurs in the play dough.

On Monday I hid dinosaurs along the path outside our school. During circle time, I told the children that we would be going on a dinosaur hunt. "We're going to find lots of dinosaurs out there!" I said. As I said this, the children's eyes grew wide and several of them looked really scared. On little boy shook his head and said, "I don't want to find dinosaurs!" At this point I realized that they thought we were going to look for real, live dinosaurs. I quickly explained that I had hidden the toy dinosaurs and that there are no real dinosaurs at our school. This was a little reminder that you have to be very careful what you say to toddlers!


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