Week Three With The Dinosaurs: Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes! (and maybe a claw or two!)

Seriously?  Do they make them ANY cuter??  I get to spend my days filled with the most DARLING Wild Things!!  

Our dinosaur hats set the pace for this fun filled and educational week.  This week our dinosaur studies focused on Dinosaur Bodies and we learned about their heads, bones, habitats, and foods.

We learned that some dinosaurs had heads as big as a car and some were very small.  As we further discussed the types of foods they ate, we discovered that their heads and teeth were larger for the the meat eaters and seemed smaller for the veggie eaters.  We hypothesized that maybe it is because it is harder to chew up a burger than a lettuce leaf so maybe they needed those big teeth to help them survive!  

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Check out our Wild Things!!

These haute hats were courtesy of our education partners at Mother Goose Time and went along with our weekly lesson about dinosaur bodies.  We discussed the things that all dinosaurs had in common which were eyes and teeth.  Some dinosaurs had noses on their heads and some had big teeth while others were quite small, but they all had them.  As we cut and pasted and placed our dino's facial features where we thought they should go we were learning about the proper geometric placement of facial features which is a developmental milestone in young learners.  (Chalk up another win for the team for making learning into play!!  Way to go team Woolsey Academy!!!)

Puzzles, puzzles everywhere!!

Our education partners at Mother Goose Time sent us some simplistic puzzles that went along with our newest book, "Jurassic Jam".  Our students excitedly recognized the  characters and went to work building each three piece puzzle back into it's proper single unit form.  Keeping fresh materials (like new puzzles) available for our little learners is vital to development as it "Allows children to learn that a whole is made of parts. Develops hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills. Builds visual-perceptual skills. Develops attention, concentration and thinking skills such as recognizing, remembering, matching, sorting and problem sorting." - https://www.lifeslittletreasures.org.au/prematurity/support-for-families/prematurity-articles/how-puzzles-can-help-your-child-develop/

​Card Sharks!

I think the backward cap says it all when it comes to how seriously this crew takes it's card playing!  We LOVE card games and this one was a dinosaur card game based on the old favorite "War".  The cards each had a differing number of dinosaurs on their face from 1-10 and the children had to count the dinosaurs quickly as a card was drawn to determine who had the card with the "most" dinosaurs on it.  The card with the most took the all the cards with "fewer" dinosaurs.  This is a complex math concept for young children that is easily mastered when put into a game format.  During this game one of our teachers sat in to aid in "following the rules" and "recognizing more and less."  

In the article, "Using Card Games To Teach Basic Math Skills" by Sheldon Soper states that cards are a great way to teach children math skills utilizing a social format that is FAR more fun than worksheets and I AGREE!!!  

"There are three reasons I love this approach:

• Playing cards are cheap and readily available.
• Card games are timeless, portable, and fun (read: way more fun than practice worksheets)
• Card games incorporate family members and fellow students in the learning process making it collaborative and social"

This simple game of Dinosaur War requires our students to recognize the number of dinosaurs on each card and then to compare their numerical value.  Games that teach are one of my very favorite methods for helping my little learners naturally increase their math skills through the power of play.

Dinosaur Skeletons and Oodles of Noodles!

Using LOTS glue of differing types of noodles was a fun and effective way to compare the different types of bones in a dinosaurs body.  This activity was part of our S.T.E.M. and discovery provided by Mother Goose Time.  Our children determined what types of noodles they felt best looked like legs, spines, and heads!

Lots of opportunities to build our knowledge of Language Arts!

“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” (Zig Ziglar)

Our Dinosaur Emergent Reader books from Mother Goose Time have been read again, and again, and again.  Repetition gives children predictable outcomes that lay solid foundations for learning complex concepts.  These books are now memorized and predictable so the next steps can be made from holding and hearing the books to beginning reading and writing.  Since our students can follow along with each word and count the number while recognizing the types of dinosaurs it is a natural progression to show them which words, names, and numbers go with the pictures.  This information is easily retained as it is predictable.  We can then move to writing the numbers and words as pictured here. 

We picked a page and some writing strips to focus on two to three words of the sentence.  We recreated those words as we carefully recognized the name "Stegosaurus" and the number "4" in the sentence.  We worked diligently to copy the text as written in the book. 

This provides excellent writing practice, word recognition, and a sense of pride upon completion!

Regular writing opportunities in the classroom also allow us as teachers to assess in real time how our students are progressing along with their emergent writing skills.  These skills begin as a child's first scribbles and progress along a predictable path.  

Each stage is just as important as the next and cannot be skipped!!

These activities are just a small part of the fun we have had learning all about dinosaur bodies!!  From songs to stories, heads to toes, we are singing, dancing, reading, and writing our way as petite paleontologists all month long at Woolsey Academy!  

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today!!

-L