Dinosaurs

Labor Day has come and gone, which heralds the beginning of our school year. It's for realsies now!

We are starting out our school year learning about dinosaurs. It was at the top of the list for both of my kids of things they want to learn about his year, and the only item they had in common, so this was an easy place to start for us.

You ready for dinosaur week? Here we go!

Reading

I love the "textbooks" we have for learning about dinosaurs. The First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life is non-fiction and contains more information than we can possibly learn in one week. With all the internet links in this book it's so easy to go deep into each subject. I would rather go for depth than breadth, but that's just me. It totally depends on how my kids are feeling and what they want to learn more about.

Science Activities

We made dinosaur fossils out of salt dough and then took them to the sandbox at the park and spent several hours playing paleontologist. It was a blast for the kids and sparked some great discussion about dinosaurs, fossils, and paleontologists.

Last year we also made a volcano out of salt dough that Tommy erupted time and time again using baking soda and vinegar. Scientists think that several volcanic eruptions may have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, so Tommy put his dinosaurs in the "lava flow" and knocked them over dead when the lava touched them. It was awesome.

If you have a dinosaur/natural history museum close, I highly suggest you go visit! There is nothing quite like walking into a room filled with dinosaur bones to inspire awe in your children. Our science museum had a spectacular animatronic dinosaur display this summer that we visited several times. Lily loved it, but was just a touch scared of the moving, blinking, roaring dinosaurs. I learned some new things, too. Like did you know that scientists now believe many dinosaurs were covered in downy feathers? Or that the bony plates on the stegosaurus' back may have been identification markers as well as a defense against predators? Fascinating.

This was my favorite display at OMSI. Scientists actually found the bones of these two dinosaurs just like this, in hot pursuit. They speculate that the dinosaurs were covered in a mud slide as they were running. If that doesn't get you excited about dinosaurs, I don't know what will!

Math

I used How Big is a Million? last year as our "dinosaur math". It does a really good job of putting numbers into perspective, plus it's just a cute story. And we're all about cute and cuddly around here, especially when it comes to dinosaurs.

Art

We made a bunch of dinosaurs out of paper using the book Dinosaur Fun. I love this book because it has such simple instructions even my five-year-old can make a dinosaur without any help from me.

Other Resources

Here are a couple of other websites where I found spectacular dinosaur activities for the younger kids. Enjoy!

Confessions of a Homeschooler has tons of "D is for Dinosaur" activities including puzzles, tracing pages, coloring, and a word search. Great for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

One Plus One Plus One Equals One has a great Dinosaur Train tot pack with puzzles, matching games, coloring, and tons of other stuff. Especially great for the littlest aspiring paleontologists!