Note: As much as we all love it, I have to be honest and let everyone know that I do miss my alone time with my shopping/coffee buddy Gabe while the girls were in preschool 2-3 times a week :)
The first theme we did was Dinosaurs and we studied them for 2 weeks. The girls were so into it and I loved that. They now know tons of dinosaur names and facts. Nothing is cuter than your 3 year old saying big words like "carnivore" and "herbivore". I borrowed lots of books from the library- including non fiction books and now Lily knows the difference between non fiction and fiction books and will come up to me everyday and say "Mommy I know what is fiction! This Little Critter book is fiction!" Gabe loved playing with all our plastic dinosaurs and especially in the dinosaur sensory bin filled with rice and beans.
Random order of pictures :)
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| At the end of the theme I asked Grace what her favorite thing about dinosaurs was- of course she said the meat eaters! |
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| Gabe helped support our theme by wearing all his dinosaur shirts |
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| Gabe saying "ROAR!" |
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| We love this Melissa and Doug color sort toy. I bought it over a year ago we use it all the time. I was happy it had a dinosaur sheet! |
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| A friend made this light table for Lily's 5th birthday. We love using it with stencils. I'm still coming up with more lessons for it. |
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| Painting cardboard dinosaurs (thanks to all the boxes we have) and they also painted clothespins too to make them a stegosaurus. |
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| A game I played with Grace. I called a letter and she had to find the letter on her dinosaur and stamp it with the dot markers. |
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| Painting with dinosaurs |
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| Our word work one day. Tracing letter Dd (for Dinosaur ;) ) |
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| I found a bunch of dinosaur stamps that I got at a garage sale last year! |
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| The only thing I bought for this theme was a felt board with dinosaurs only because Marty found it while we were at the craft store (searching for non-dinosaur related things) |
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| Dinosaur Gabriel! |
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| Roll and color Dinosaur game (They rolled a dice and what number was rolled was the number they colored on their dinosaur) |
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| Another dinosaur outfit for Gabe |
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| Counting eggs and matching the number |
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| Dinosaur sensory bin Rice and beans (The morning off I painted some beans blue for dinosaur eggs and ripped up some egg carton pieces and painted them like volcanoes) |
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| Gabe loved the sensory bin and did not get any rice or beans anywhere! (Note: We still get this out and he will end up throwing some beans and rice on the ground. It's definitely an activity I have to sit next to him and model good behavior.) |
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| Grace counting dinosaurs and circling the number of dinosaurs |
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| Lily practicing her sight words (or popcorn words as we call them) with dinosaur cards |
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| Gabe's turn with the felt board and another dinosaur shirt :) |
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| Dinosaur sandwiches for lunch one day |
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| Making fossils in cloud dough |
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| Dinosaur window sun catcher |
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| Grace painted a triceratops and wrote a story about her dinosaur. It says: "My dinosaur is blue, white, yellow and blue. She likes to catch flies. She is a plant eater. Her name is Triceratops and she is a girl. She just likes to eat plants. Sometimes she goes in water." |
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| Our dinosaur art work |
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| Lily's story: "My triceratops is going to dress up. She is going to wear a purple dress. She is nice to people. She loves to paint and fall asleep. She is going to have a dinosaur party for all her triceratops friends!" |
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| more cloud dough and dinosaur playing |
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| still supporting the dinosaur theme with a dinosaur shirt :) (P.S. Now I see dinosaur shirts everywhere for boys! I had no idea how many dinosaur shirts were out there or that we even had a few of them at our house!) |
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| Lily's favorite thing about dinosaurs is that they are extinct! |
We are looking forward to warm weather and visiting the Field Museum to see a real T-Rex fossil "Sue".
