D is for Dinosaurs!

Last week we were working on the letter D, and the coolest letter D theme for a boy is Dinosaurs!  The problems with this in our house is that Little Guy already knows all about dinosaurs.  For his 3rd birthday we went to the Orlando Science Center where they have a dinosaur exhibit.  As soon as we entered the dinosaur room, he exclaimed, "Look Mom!! An edmontosaurus!!"  I had never even heard of an edmontosaurus, but I looked at the sign and he was absolutely right!  I wish I could take some credit, but it all goes to Nick Jr.'s "Dino Dan."  Little Guy used to watch it with his big brother every night while I made dinner.  Ok, back on topic. 

Letter of the week.

We sort of just used dinosaurs as a theme, and concentrated a lot on math and science this week. 

I bought one of those dinosaurs that grows when you put them in water ("poppin' bigs" we call them in our house) which we put in a jar on Monday.  We observed it all week to see how it would change.

Here's a pic of the dinosaur on day 3 - the halfway point:

Here's the result of 5 days in water.

Little Guy was dying to play with it, but I could barely get it out of the jar!  I hadn't anticipated the dinosaur growing bigger than the opening to the jar!  I eventually managed though.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed that Little Guy has trouble with puzzles.  They are just not his forte.  With this in mind, I really wanted to start encorporating more puzzling in our lives.  While we have quite a few, most of them seem too difficult for Little Guy.  His big brother was a puzzle MACHINE when he was this age, so most of the puzzles we have are kind of advanced.  I got rid of all of our "baby" puzzles (the wooden puzzles where you fit the animal into the space etc) quite a while back because Little Guy was doing those pretty easily.  It seems I've been obvivious to the fact that there is a step between baby puzzles and jigsaw puzzles.   I've gotten a few inbetweenies, but I figured I could make some themed ones pretty easily.  This week we did a dinosaur puzzle using a coloring book page.

We also broke out the Moon Dough with the dinosaur mold, thinking Little Guy would create dinosaurs and a dinosaur environment.  Wrong.  We ended up becoming chefs and creating a very interesting "stew."  I will write a post about that experience next, but just know that it was pretty darn fun - and comical!

We did our some pages out of our workbooks (at Little Guy's request - as usual), and our Letter Tiles page:

I found a cute little wooden dinosaur at Michael's for Little Guy to paint.  He's in love with painting lately (as long as he doesn't get any on himself)!

We also played with our dinosaur sensory bin.  Filled with rocks from the Dollar Tree, foam leaves, tiny dinosaurs, some kiddie chopsticks from EPCOT, and a box for sorting.

We worked in our Brainquest book on the Dominos page, traced some diamonds, and did our usual "Find the D's and Letter D Writing Practice pages from Confessions of a homeschooler.  We also did some cutting and pasting work this week, as well as some shape and color matching games.

Books we read this week:




"Dinosaur's Adventure in Alphabet Town" by Doris Cook
(Great introduction to all things D)

"Sammy and the Dinosaurs" by Ian Whybrow
(ehh...it was alright.  Little Guy liked it because it had a part where I whispered, and he absolutely loves whispering lately)

"Tyrannosaurus Rex" by Helen Frost
(Nonfiction book about T-rexes - just enough words on a page to keep a 4 year old from being too bored)

"Brachiosaurus" by Carol L. Lindeen
(pretty much the same thing as the T-rex book)

"Harry and the Dinosaurs Say 'Rahh'!"  by Ian Whybrow
(About going to the dentist...just as mediocre as the other Whybrow book)

"How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight" by Jane Yolen
(cute, classic)

"Magic School Bus:  In the Time of the Dinosaurs" by Anna Cole and Bruce Deyer
(wayyyy too old for Little Guy!  I should have read throught it better at the library before I checked it out.  I made it work though, but skipping over a LOT of the text)


Stay tuned for a post about our Moon Dough "stew" and the day of concocting it led to! :)