We are DINO-mite!

We had an exciting week at Pirate Pete Preschool as we talked about dinosaurs!  The children walked in on Monday super excited (many decked out in dino shirts) and were explaining how to tell various dinosaurs apart before we even began our lessons.

We got new dinosaur toys this semester and used them to talk about the various differences in their bodies but then used them to practice measuring items around the room.  We measured how tall things were as well as how long they were and even measured our own bodies!

We also talked about the time in which dinosaurs lived and how it was in the past.  Then we practiced sequences by arranging images in puzzles to place them in order of what happens first, then second, then third, etc.  This is a tough skill to master and we will continue to do activities like this this semester to help our kiddos understand timing.  Feel free to talk about the steps you are taking to do activities at home and use words like "first", or "to start" followed by, "next" or "last", etc.

We did a lot of other math activities this week in addition to sequencing, we also sorting various dino toys into groups based on similarities and then worked on puzzles with a variety of dinosaurs and had to find the colors within the puzzles to learn how to match them to get the puzzle to fit together.  

We talked about dinosaur bones this week and what bones might look similar to people bones and what bones might look different.  Then we took actual X-rays and pretended to be doctors to assemble a human body on our white board by taping them together.

Speaking of doctors, we separated body parts after reading a book about dinosaur parts by learning where a dinosaur heart is located on a dinosaur and then where our human hearts are located and then listened to our hearts with real stethoscopes and then began assembling our organs on human puzzles.  During these activities we compared what items we saw in our dino book and what body parts we did not see in our book to compare and contrast what is on a human and what was in a dinosaur.

We worked on building dinosaurs a lot this week as well when we built them out of play dough and paper.  

 We did our fair share of science experiments this week as well with making volcanoes from the time of the dinosaurs and broke apart dino mystery bowls. 

 We created some process art this week with our hands and paint by painting our hands and marking paper to then turn our handprints into dinosaurs.  

Some children added eyes and drew with crayons on their pages as well while others simply placed paint all over the paper and were 'done'.  This is what makes process art a process; allowing the children time to create the way they want to create.

We traced letters this week a few times for some of our pre-reading activities too.  Sometimes we used dinosaur toys as stamps in paint to make dino-stomp marks on the first letter of their name.  The children would put on their smocks and head to the tables to find the sheet that had the first letter of their name on it in order to search through the ABC's of everyone's names. 

We also had the children follow letter lines on paper with dinosaur toys without paint using the toys to created letters entirely out of dinosaurs.

We did dinosaur puzzles with pictures of dinosaurs the teachers cut apart.  The children sorted the pictures of dinosaurs and glued them together on paper.  Some added one dino puzzle and some added three of four puzzles.  If your child was very interested in this activity and have a color printer at home feel free to try this with your kiddos at home.  If your child enjoys coloring, you can have them make their own puzzles by coloring in a coloring book, tearing out their picture and cutting it into 3-5 pieces to put together.

We built dinosaurs with iPads this week and searched for bones as well.  Then we jumped back in to science and broke apart dinosaur eggs to discover what types of dinosaurs were in the eggs.  We used lots of various ingredients to see which ones would make the eggs dissolve the fastest.  We used cups and droppers and a variety of liquids as our little scientists were really focused on getting those eggs opened up!

 By the time Friday rolled around we were ready to build our own dinosaurs using pictures of dino skulls and then a variety of items to represent bones and organs.  Some of the children placed bones in an organized manner representing ribs and legs while others added materials to the tops of their skeletons to represent skin.  We love seeing how creative they can get with these activities!

We built a T-Rex out of puzzle pieces on Friday and then went on a dinosaur adventure by crawling through a tunnel like a four legged dinosaur then walked across the 'dino-bridge' and ROARED at other dinos in our path like the two legged t-rex.

We read a lot of dinosaur books this week and sang a lot of dinosaur songs and roared a lot of dinosaur roars.  This was truly a preschooler favorite topic this week.

Before heading home we created dinosaurs for one last math activity; the teachers gave each child a half circle to represent a dinosaur body and then the children used various geometric shapes to add spikes, arms, legs and heads, etc.  We had a terrific week!

What's Coming Up?

This coming week we will be talking about food and nutrition.

Don't forget there is NO PRESCHOOL Friday, February 16th in light of the state gymnastics meet held here at PHS.

If your family is looking for some indoor fun in this cold, check out some Pirate basketball, gymnastics or other Pirate sports and activities at PHS this month by clicking this link.