Dino Dig

This week brought out the paleontologist in all of us.

To start of these ancient creatures who roamed the earth so many years ago, we read one of our favorite dinosaur books of all times- Dinosaur Roar! by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. We met many dinosaurs and learned their names and characteristics.

In a sensory bin was a dinosaur world with all kinds of dinosaurs roaming around. There were meat eaters, plant eaters, land dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs and those that swam. Amazingly enough they spent the week together in harmony. Even Tyrannosaurus Rex behaved himself.

We loved reading about Professor Potts who finds some big dinosaur bones and brings them back to his laboratory to reassemble, but the resulting skeletons never seem quite right. It's called Big Old Bones by Carol Carrick.

Dinosaur bones were brought back from our excavation sight and it was up to us to dig them out. We used special tools like picks and brushes. We had to be careful not to destroy the specimens.

We played a game called "Dinosaur, Dinosaur, Where's Your Bone?" We sat in a circle with one of us in middle. The middle player put a dinosaur bone behind his or her back and closed his or her eyes. One of us in the circle took the bone and we all placed our hands behind our backs.

Then we chanted:

"Dinosaur, dinosaur, where's your bone, somebody took it from your home, guess who?"

The middle player had to try to guess who took the bone. We took turns being in the middle.

After reading Dinosaur Dinners, 

we tried to decide what kind of dinosaurs we would be- carnivores like t-rex or herbivores like so many of our favorites. The results proved most of us to be omnivores- we liked meat and plants!

We discovered some mysterious eggs in our dinosaur world. After reading The Dinosaur Egg Mystery, 

we found creative ways to open our eggs and we discovered dinosaur babies! 

We beebopped with the dinosaurs in Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp,

and then we dipped dinosaurs in paint and they stomped around on paper to make great designs. When our dinosaurs were done dancing, we gave them baths and showers in our dinosaur bathtubs.

Next we did some dinosaur dancing of our own. Rolling a large die with dinosaur activities on each face, we stomped, twisted, spun, jumped, ran and shook our tails.

We couldn't go on a dinosaur dig without creating some fossils. We used self-hardening clay and pressed dinosaurs and dinosaur bones into the clay to create  some very cool fossils. 

Our last adventure on our dig was to visit an erupting volcano! We took our dinosaurs with us to explore.

All in all, our dig was quite successful!