Dino month

Hello purple room families!

It's my first blog as the new purple room teacher! A lot of changes have been occurring in purple room, but they all have been new and exciting ones. We have been losing friends that are journing on to new schools and we wish them the best of luck! However, we've been gaining fresh new faces and have a new exciting quest to take. Teacher Cecilia and I have been enjoying are time in purple room and are looking forward to all the new memories we can create.

Now, moving on to the class activities. I have noticed a major interest in Dinosaurs with the purple room children and have decided to dedicate this whole month of August to the exploration of the ancient creatures. A Dinosaur table has been set up for children to imagine themselves in the Dinosaur time and to allow them to explore the different Dinosaurs that lived in such a time.

Several activities have been set up and created to help children explore the fascinating creatures. Gak, along with plastic shape foot prints, were put out for children to explore what they could do with them. Most children created a Tyrannosaurs Rex footprint, while some named them to be a Stegosaurus, or even a duck footprint!

A popular dinosaur was the Stegosaurus. During circle time we had a small discussion about the creature, such as how big we thought it was? what it ate? Why did it have spikes?

Then, we did a fine motor activity by painting our hands and stamping them onto a spike-less stegosaurus to create the Stegosaurus's spikes. Each child got to pick their own color for spikes and place them where they thought the appropriate place may be.

 

Dinosaur puzzles were put out during station time. Learning to do collaborative work was a really big part of this activity. It also turned into an interesting guessing game of "what is that dinosaur going to be doing?"

Dinosaur figures were presented in our science area to let the kids explore what different possibilities they could use the dinosaurs for.

Tommy was building homes for the Dinosaurs to sleep in.

 

 

Pasta noodles and outlined dinosaur figures were set out on a table for children to practice their fine motor skills by tracing them. It was nice to see the delicacy the children had used to create their fossil looking Dino's.

 

Dinosaur bones became a topic of interest. So making fossils of our own became something worth exploring. We had done collaborative work to help make the dough that would soon become a fossilized dinosaur. Children sat at a table and took turns pouring in the ingredients into a bowl and then using their hands to stir the ingredients together. We discussed the texture of the dough and what it felt like between their fingers. Best to say it was "Squishy!" Once the dough was ready, we shaped them into a circular shape, pressed tiny dinosaur figurines into the dough, let them bake for 3 hours and "Wah Lah!", fossils!

 

 

 

Purple room and Blue room had a special guest speaker, Mr. Mike! Mr. Mike came to visit our school and share all the really neat fossils he had, and also shared more facts about Dinosaurs.

After our special visit, play dough was distributed on the tables for children to try and mimic fossils Mr. Mike may have showed them, or any other interest they may have had.

CK, (In the right photo) said he made a " Dinosaur!"

 

And Milo made "pancakes for the Dinosaurs to eat!"

 

Purple room was interested in what Dinosaurs would eat. We explored the difference between carnivores and herbivores. We then took out paper and crayons and started drawing different kinds of food for the Dinosaurs to eat. Nicholas, here, drew a picture of "leaves" for the hungry dinosaurs!

In order for children to imagine themself as a Dinosaur, I thought it would be neat to give them Dinosaur grabbers, in which they could imagine themselves as hungry Dinsaurs looking for food. They used the Dinosaur grabbers to try and pick leaves off the fences and up from the ground. Children were building their hand strength as well as coordination by trying different strategies to try and use the grabbers to grab food.

The overall Dino month was a big hit and we definitely our going to continue our Dinosaur exploration during the letter "D" week.

 

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