Volcanoes and Dinosaurs and Summer, Oh My!! Part 2

The dinosaur adventures continued as we did various art projects, had a variety of sensory experiences, learned about and made our own fossils, had a dino hunt, and more...

We have these plastic dinosaur templates with punch-out centers.
We lightly taped the centers down and the children painted around
them as they chose to do, leaving a cool dino print when the
center is removed.

We created cloud dough, which we dubbed "Dino Dough" and
had lots of dinosaur adventures in it. It smelled great and felt, oh
so silky. (5-8 cups of plain flour, 1 cup baby oil; I began with
5 cups and put it out, but added more flour as the days went by)

We learned about Animal Defenses through our GEMS guide
and discussed how dinosaurs could protect themselves.
We used an overhead projector (a dinosaur in its own right) and
projected images on the blinds. The kids loved the adventure
of seeing things in a new way. (This is a T-Rex hanging out
near an erupting volcano)

We had a generic dinosaur and discussed which one was better
able to protect itself through it's defenses.

Each child was able to choose the defenses they wanted for
their dinosaur. After they were dried we projected "their
dinosaur" on the wall and they shared the defenses
they had given their dinosaur.

Animal Defenses is another guide created through
GEMS (Great Explorations in Math and Science) at
Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley. They are an
amazing resource. You can find more information at
this link: www.lhsgems.org  Click on guides to see
all the ones they have available.

We later used the outline stencils to make another view
of the dinosaurs.

We played "Pin the Horn on the Triceratops".

We made dinosaur tracks with paint.

We did the story of the Baby Stegosaurus, "Are You My Mommy?"
during group time and left the board out for the children
to re-enact it themselves. 

We discovered dinosaur skeletons buried in the dino dough
and gently brushed away the sediment.

We created our own fossils from either a T-Rex footprint...

or lying small dinos in the dough, then baking on low heat.

Be sure to go back to our previous post to read more
about this adventure.
http://msbarbarasblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/its-dino-dig.html   

We did dino sticker stories. Each child chose some dinosaurs
to place on the paper and then dictated a story to me, which I
wrote down exactly as they said it. We later discussed the role
of an author and read their stories at a group time.

What an adventure we've had. We had three full weeks of dinosaur adventures, explorations, and learning. What an amazing way to end our school year!