Diggin' Dinosaurs

Once we finished our tentative lesson plan of Letter of the Week, I didn't have a new plan or any ideas of what we could do as far as new subjects to learn about. We still have our workbooks and dive into those every once in a while, but to be honest our days are still centered around Buddyboy's naps and not on lessons or crafts. So when a friend of mine shared that she was reading the Magic Tree House series to her 3 & 4 year olds, and then another friend said the books had great history, science, and everyday lessons written into the stories I decided Babycake and I would give the books a try and see where that led us.

Oh my goodness! She loves them! Book #1 of the series is Dinosaurs Before Dark. I found it cheap at a used bookstore and we read it about 4 times in the first week. After the first two times reading it I went to the library to see if there were any good dinosaur fact books for my 3 year old. What did I find, but that The Magic Tree House series has a Fact Tracker co-series which is a nonfiction guide to Magic Tree House stories. This book had a lot of information. About half of the book was presented in an interesting way for my 3 year old, so we did get some good information. I also found a great National Geographic dinosaur book. There were lots of colorful pictures and the information was simple and concise.

Babycake learned so much from all of these great resources. Our first lesson was simply to learn the names of some different dinosaurs. To help her remember what dinosaur was what, we crafted them out of paper plates. I couldn't miss the the opportunity to also show that the plate was in the shape of a "D," which stands for dinosaur. With each dinosaur, we discussed if it was a meat eater, carnivore, or a plant eater, an herbivore.

You can get the templates for the dinosaur parts at The Craft Train.

Recipe and directions atRainy Day Mum.

Our next lesson was focused on fossils. We are members of our local Children's Museum which has an amazing dinosaur exhibit so Babycake was able to really visualize dinosaur bones when we discussed this. It was a little more difficult for her to visualize the bones in the ground, so we made fossil prints of our own.





We made fossil prints of dinosaurs as well dinosaur tracks. We discussed how these kinds of dinosaurs are no longer around and so the only way we can learn about them is from their fossils. An interesting fact we learned from this is that birds are living dinosaurs. How cool is that?! You could have a pet dinosaur!





Our last lesson was about dinosaur babies. Babycake quickly got the concept that baby dinosaurs come from eggs and not mommy bellies. She also grasped the fact that dinosaurs are reptiles, but that doesn't mean she gets that a reptile is cold blooded. She also had a hard time remembering that dinosaurs didn't have fur.



Our little dino eggs were easy to make. I printed images of baby dinosaurs then cut construction paper in egg shapes. Then we cut zig zags through the eggs, glued the baby dino onto the bottom portion of the egg, and connected the two shell parts with a split pin so the egg could open and close.


Now that we've exhausted my dinosaur crafts and lessons, as well as my willingness to read Dinosaurs Before Dark for the hundredth time, we are ready to move onto the next book in the Magic Tree House series, The Knight at Dawn.