Discovering Dinosaurs!

Dinosaur week was a HUGE success!!!  Dinosaurs are so fascinating and we had a terrific time learning about them and enjoyed some very fun dinosaur books as well like the darling books by Jane Yolen.  A few of the titles are: “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?” and “How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?” as well as “How Do Dinosaurs Go To School?”  The kids loved these books when we read them in class!  They teach right and wrong and good manners and the illustrations are wonderful!

  Dinosaur puzzles were a hit this week!

 Field trips are the BEST!  This week we went to the BYU Museum of Paleontology to see first hand the dinosaur bones and fossils we’d been learning about this week.  Thank you to all the parents who drove and helped out at the museum.  It’s always wonderful to have you with us!

The children thought it was so neat to see the paleontology students working so carefully to uncover more dinosaur fossils.  

 Hands-on exhibits were fascinating!  

 Fossilized dinosaur eggs and nest.  

 Wow!  It was awesome to see just how big some of their footprints were!

 We had some great projects this week applying the children’s skills with scissors and glue as well as figuring out which dinosaur bones went to which dinosaur picture.   

The kids also enjoyed making their own 3-D fossil!  The did a great job!

After going to the museum, we made our own fossil-looking prints of dinosaurs in Play-doh.  I love the excitement and wonder of children as they discover a new way to play with something and a new way to see things.  Some of the kids even wrapped up the small toy dinosaurs and pretended they were hatching!  

Caterpillar and Butterfly update:  Our butterflies all emerged this week!  What a remarkable process! 

One class let a butterfly go this week.  The others will get to next week in class.  This is always an exciting moment!  What will the butterfly do?  This particular butterfly wasn’t in a hurry to leave.  We carefully got him situated on a nice safe leaf where he stayed the entire length of recess.  

 We had such a great week!  We also learned the letter “D” and are getting ready for next week’s theme:  USA!!