Theme: Dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs

O and E: 4.75 years old

June 17-28, 2013

Dinosaurs was such a fun theme that we covered it for two weeks! 

LANGUAGE ARTS:

I hid LOTS of CVC words in Easter eggs (dino eggs) around the house. The boys raced around to find them, then record them in the right column based on the middle vowel sound. We used the same list of words several times throughout the week - separating into long vowels and short vowels, practicing ABC order and counting syllables. The spinner game was used to record real vs. nonsense words - great practice reading, writing, defining and taking turns! We used the words Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus to make as many words as we could (like Boggle). I couldn't believe how many they made on their own! Other times we would give a clue and they would guess the word and then spell it on their own. Lastly, color by sight word.

MATH:
I used the Easter eggs again and hid slips of paper with triceratops on them and the numbers from 5-100 counting by 5s. They found them, colored them in on their hundreds chart, then said each number and put the triceratops in the right order. This was our first attempt at counting by 5s. We filled in a Dental Digits page and created a dino head with their chosen number of teeth. They loved this one! They created their own patterns for the spikes on a dinosaur's back and also sorted math sentences into =10 vs not=10. We practiced writing teen numbers and counting starting at 10 too.

SCIENCE:

I saw a great idea on Pinterest to use playdoh and just let it dry out to make your own fossils. So much easier than all that fuss with sand! After they had totally dried out I gave them to the boys and they had to find the toy dinosaurs that matched each fossil. They wanted to make their own fossils for the rest of the week. I couldn't believe how much they loved this! We made a Venn diagram for T-Rex vs Brachiosaurus, labeled parts of dinosaurs and filled in bubble charts for Velociraptor and Stegosaurus after reading non-fiction books about each specific dinosaur. These little guys know more about dinosaurs that I thought was possible!

This theme was well worth spending two weeks on. Next week's theme is Down on the Farm!