Dinosaur Footprint Painting

As part of our dinosaur theme this week, we made dinosaur footprints by walking our toy dinosaurs through "mud" (black and brown paint) and across paper.

Of course this quickly became finger painting.

In the end, we had to give the dinosaurs a bath to wash off all that mud.

 

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Dino Museum

Some of the children in our class have seen real dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum and they have shared their experiences with the class. We decided to turn the wooden castle in our classroom into a museum. After some discussion, the children decided to call it the Dino Museum.

We printed out pictures of dinosaurs and attached them to the dinosaur bone displays that the children made earlier in the week.  Then we hung them in the museum.

We also hung our T-Rex pictures.

The children were very proud of their paleontological work!

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Young Paleontologists

This week we talked about dinosaur bones. We read Digging Up Dinosaurs by Aliki. After reading the book, I buried dinosaur bones (Q-Tips) in the sensory table and the children pretended to be paleontologists. They used shovels and magnifying glasses to find the bones. Some of the children used paint brushes to dust off the "bones" just like the paleontologists did in the book. 

When they were finished finding the bones, the children put them together to make dinosaurs. They glued them onto paper and told me which dinosaur they had made. 

 We also went digging for dinosaur teeth (that I cut from card stock).

 We glued the teeth onto T-Rex skulls. 

When they were finished, some children examined their work with magnifying glasses. 

Listening to  two year olds saying the word "Paleontologist" made my day!

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Stegosaurus and Triceratops

The children’s interest in dinosaurs has not waned even after a week of dinosaur related activities. We have done several dinosaur related art project in the past few days. 

We made hand print Stegosauruses...

and Triceratops puppets. 

For these, I cut the horns and the frills out of construction paper and had the children count out three horns, two eyes, and one frill each for their puppet. Then they glued all of the pieces onto a paper bag.

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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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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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